Into the Dark With God

Art for Arts Sake?

2012-01-31T20:52:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article by the founder of The School of Life, Allain de Bottom, who broaches the question “Should Art Really Be For its Own Sake Alone?” I would highlyrecommend this brief article to anyone at all interested in the intersection ofTheology, the Church and the Arts. Thearticle reminds me of much of Nicholas Wolterstorff’s critique of the arts inhis book Art in Action which I wouldalso recommend. de Bottom argues that anartist’s reason for creating doesn’t necessarily undermine the value of thatwhich is created. This of course buttsheads so to speak with much of the modernist “art for arts sake” aesthetic, whichhe suggests loathes any whisper of aesthetic utility. From this relatively rigid perspective, artmust be encountered and experienced only as art, nothing more, and nothingless. At any rate I wanted to take a fewmoments and play his assertion, which I generally agree with against anotherassertion I tend to agree with, Jacques Maritain’s assertion that the artistshould create first and foremost for the good of that which is made, and seewhich one might come out on top.

I appreciate de Bottom’s concern with artistic content. Most artists through history don’t share the21^st century art world’s aesthetic. Most through the 18^th century at least connected art withsome other purpose. Their art wasn’t created solely for its own sake. Even modern artists respected in the artworld have done the same. de Bottomsites one of my favorite artists Mark Rothko as an example. He suggests that Rothko himself hoped hiswork would accomplish something: “allowing the viewer a moment of communionaround an echo of the suffering of our species.” I would suggest many who have seen his work,particularly the layered black canvases he painted for his work for the RothkoChapel, can attest that he accomplishes this, and perhaps more. From the opposite direction I was struck on atrip to the National Gallery of Art in DC last year (after reading Art in Action) at the manner in which artwork intended for devotional use, for example altar pieces which at one pointwere installed in churches, were displayed outside of their intended context,with no meaningful nod to their liturgical past. This removal of an art work from autilitarian context in order to serve in a purely aesthetic one seems peculiarat best to me. So I resonate with theassertion that the artist inserts some content into what they create, even ifthat content is the assertion that what they create carries no content.

On the other side I resonate with the notion of art’sinherent value regardless of its content. For that I go to Roman Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, who I mustconfess I read largely through Flannery O’Connor’s understanding of him whichshe shares in her book on writing Mysteryand Manners. I’ve since readMaritain’s Art and Scholasticism, butfor some reason I still tend to prefer O’Connor’s Maritain over Maritainhimself. At any rate, I tend to agreewith O’Connor that the artist, particularly the Christian artist, should notcreate as a means to simply promulgate some message. She would suggest that message lives insidethe artist and will reveal itself through the work. In order for it to be truly heard it must bedeeply incarnated into the work, in a manner similar to the way in which theBeing and truth of God were incarnated into Jesus, partially to give that trutha greater resonance with those with whom the Divine intended tocommunicate. So in short, the purposethe artist hopes to accomplish must be deeply packed into their work. It must come second to the value of the workitself. The viewer, hearer, reader ofthe work’s encounter with the artist’s purpose must be earned through the hardwork of the artist to incarnate this purpose into their work.

So which side wins? Well, you may have figured out by now if you’ve read any of my blogsthat I tend to be a both/and type of person. I believe both the aesthetic and utilitarian, for the lack of a betterword, have to live together for art to function in a manner in which I wouldtend to recognize as art. Now Iunderstand the subjectivity of that statement. And I understand the cans of worms opened by that conclusion, but that’swhat the comment section and future blogs are for, isn’t it?

Comfortably Numb: A Restless Prayer

2012-01-24T13:21:00.000-08:00

When I was a child
I caught a fleeting glimpse
Out of the corner of my eye
I turned to look but it was gone
I cannot put my finger on it now
The child is grown,
The dream is gone.
And I have become comfortably numb

-Roger Waters

I’m not too manly to admit it. I cannot listen to Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb without tears coming tomy eyes. There’s something about DavidGilmour’s 4 minute guitar solo at the end of the song that does it to me everytime, which of course is no good when you’re stuck in traffic and trying tochoke back tears so the guy in the Beamer next to you doesn’t catch sight ofyou weeping like a baby in your car. Ona side note, this is why I try not to judge the folks who dance and make handgestures to the music in their cars to harshly… there are times when I’m one ofthem.

At any rate, I would venture to say that the song stirs inme something akin to my experience in worship. Of course what is stirred isn’t a worship of the song, or of Gilmour orFloyd, but of the God who gave Gilmour his hands and feel on the guitar, andgave Roger Waters his creativity with words, concepts and composition. It’s the same experience of Divine encounterI often feel when playing drums as I individually, and as a member of the faithcommunity, employ music to worship in a church setting. I know that will sound odd to many ears, andI don’t fully understand why or how that happens, but I’ve been thinking aboutit, and would like to explore that “why” and “how” a little here. This may be irrelevant to most folks,particularly if you don’t experience this song in the way that I do, but I’mpretty sure we all have some song, or movie, or television show that regularly,if only fleetingly, pulls back the veil that separates seen reality from the realitynot typically available to our senses. So perhaps this might be helpful to someone other than me.

The music for the song was written by Gilmour who brought itto Waters who then wrote the lyric. Itwas included on Floyd’s 1979 concept album TheWall, and is one of only two songs on the album that don’t fully integrateinto the story being told. The songitself can be viewed in 2 sections. Theverses are written in the key of B minor and, depending on the arrangement, cansound ominous and threatening, which is the way Gilmour preferred it. Waters didn’t take to that arrangement, andso the recorded version sounds less ominous than Gilmour’s live versions. At any rate, the verses are sung from the perspectiveof someone other than the song’s “protagonist”, for the lack of a betterword. It’s someone trying to “help” thesinger, perhaps a doctor or counselor. Thishelper seems to be someone who does not necessary have the singer’s bestinterests at heart. The chord progression,Bm, A, G, Em, Bm, is constantly descending. In short the verses are a constant and continual “downer”. I would suggest this plays on our conceptual constructsinvolving angst and depression. We describe it as “feeling down”, and it’soften described as a feeling of “drowning” emotionally. The verses seem to embody that feeling ofbeing pulled under, of being out of control, a victim of hopelessness anddespair.

The chorus changes keys to D major and seems to be theprotagonist’s inner thoughts. It’s farbrighter than the verse and alternates between A and D and then C and G chords,moving in fifths, which embodies a more familiar and comforting quality thanthe verse progression. The singer seemsto describe an inability to communicate with those outside of his or her body, andin both chorus’ reaches for and cites childhood memories as a type of comfort. The singer seems to want to push back at theverses’ narrator’s attempts to anesthetize him or her, but seems unable to,ending each chorus with the admission that “I have become comfortablynumb.”

Additionally, latent in each chorus is a sense ofunarticulatable spiritual longing for something only fleetingly experienced asa child. In the first chorus there isthe assertion that “this is not how I am”. This longing is clearer in the second chorus when he admits that as achild he “caught a fleeting glimpse” of something, but “cannot put my finger onit now” That fleeting glimpse as a childhas been replaced with numb acquiescence as an adult to something seeminglyless meaningful than that childhood experience with what I might callmystery. Then at the end of the secondchorus we go back to the “downer” verse progression. It seems the protagonist is stuck in his orher numbness. The chords seem to answerthis inner struggle with, “this numbness is all there is”… but that’s whenGilmour steps in.

The rest of the song, which is about 4 minutes, a lifetimein rock music, is dedicated to David Gilmour’s brilliant guitar solo. It’s at this point the waterworks prepare toflow. At the start of the solo Gilmourtends to hang around the middle to bottom of the guitar fret board, playing“lower” notes. He even gets down toplaying around the 2^nd and 4^th frets on the A string,inserting an open A few times. The solostarts in the territory of the verse progression, low. Over the course of the 4 minute solo Gilmoreseems to slowly work up the fret board. Spending time riffing around the 7^th, 9^th and 10^thfrets, then at the 14^th and 16^th frets, until finally in thewailing climax of the solo he’s droning for measure after measure on the 21^stand 22^nd frets on the high e string, which is the part of the solothat most deeply affects me.

This is by no means a straight line. There are peaks and valleys. Sometimes rising, sometimes falling, butalways with what I might describe as a transcendent trajectory. This feels like an attempt to accomplishmusically what the verses couldn’t, to climb the fret board, overcome the numbness,and touch that briefly glimpsed mystery. I can identify with that struggle: which manifests itself in myspiritual life in my pursuit of God. Notto mix musical metaphors here, but Jon Foreman of Switchfoot articulates thiswell in their song Restless. He sings:

Until the sea of glasswe meet
At last completed and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside
And laughter drinks them dry

I'll be waiting
Anticipating
All that I aim for
What I was made for

With every heartbeat
All of my blood bleeds
Running inside me
I'm looking for you

What moves me about the song is that I experience musicallywhat Foreman describes lyrically; that restless search and struggle to findGod, which mirror’s Augustine’s ancient assertion that, “You have made us foryourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” I would suggest this is true even aftercoming to faith. Even then we’rerestless for a deeper understanding, a greater knowledge, and more completeexperience of the Divine. This is whatthe song and Gilmour’s solo draws out of me.

The song ends with Gilmour sliding back down the fret board,ending back where he started on the Bm. Was all of that transcended trajectory for nothing? Were the verses right? Is the numbness inescapable? I suppose thatdepends on how a person hears the song. I travel up and down the fret board myself. Sometimes experiencing and reflecting theglimpses of God’s breaking into the world in Jesus, and sometimes acquiescingto the world’s anesthetizing numbness. It’s then, in the pressing numbness,that I find I’m thankful for the restlessness. There’s a sense in which one can view it as the Spirit’s loving elbow toour ribs, and you can see it in action in the song’s protagonist and his or herlonging for the source of that “fleeting glimpse.” So take heart, even if we find ourselves backwhere we started, after all of our efforts, we find the Spirit there continuingto draw all of us toward the love of God. May we have the ears to hear it… in this andother songs.

The Darkest Night of the Year

2011-12-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

"Be not afraid; for behold, Ibring you Good News of a great joy... This day is born the Savior", thatis, he who, as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience tothe Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness ofthe world. Behind him omnipotence and freedom; before, powerlessness, bonds andobedience. Behind him the comprehensive divine vision; before him the prospectof the meaninglessness of death on the Cross between two criminals, Behind himthe bliss of life with the Father; before him, grievous solidarity with all whodo not know the Father, do not want to know him and deny his existence. Rejoicethen, for God himself has passed this way! – Hans Urs Von Balthasar

The musical group Over the Rhineentitled their 1996 Christmas album TheDarkest Night of the Year. The toneof the record matches the title. It isChristmas sung from somewhere near St. John of the Cross’ DarkNight of the Soul. Granted, noteveryone will find that appealing, but I have a soft spot for it because anyonewho knows me knows that I have a fascination with darkness. I’m fascinated by our collective instinct inrelation to it. I’m fascinated by themystery and unknown quality of the darkness, and the potential it has to revealsomething of the Being and actions of God. And I’m fascinated to survey a landscape that God promises will be transformedand imagine what it might look like after that transformation.

It seems to me most folks aren’tcomfortable with the dark, and I include myself in that number. Leave me alone in a dark unknown room, andthe heebie-jeebies that follow have the potential to cause a panic. So we often try to mitigate the dark, andintroduce some level of light into the murk. I suppose we could ignore it and make due until our eyes adjust. Or we could sit quietly and wait for a lightsource to present itself. Some actuallyenjoy the dark, and are irritated at any inroads the light might make. It’s rare though that anyone who prefers alit room to a pitch black one would be willing to enter a pitch black room andremain there until given permission to leave it, though that of course is theheart of the story we celebrate every December 25.

With that in mind, I think I’m going to make it aChristmas tradition to post a link to the homily below every year on this blog. It is a relatively short, but potent reviewof a story we can tend to be overly familiar with. It’s alsothe sermon from which this blog takes its title, Into the Dark With God. Enjoy.

Lemony Snicket, Martin Luther and Madonna: Truth is Truth is Truth

2011-12-13T12:22:00.000-08:00

If you work hard, and become successful, it does notnecessarily mean you are successful because you worked hard, just as if you aretall with long hair it doesn’t mean you would be a midget if you were bald. –Lemony Snicket

Blessings at times come to us through ourlabors and at times without our labors, but never because of our labors, forGod always gives them because of His undeserved mercy. – Martin Luther

Based on some of the reactions I received when I posted theLemony Snicket quote on my Facebook page, I imagine many of those who read thiswill cringe a bit at the proposition that success is not always contingent onhard work, and that hard work does not always breed success. If the latter were the case, African womenwould be the richest people on the planet, but alas they are not (yes, I stolethat from a friend’s Facebook post). TheLemony Snicket quote originated in an online post from the character LemonySnicket/author Daniel Handler entitled, “Thirteen Observations made by LemonySnicket while watching Occupy Wall Street from a Discreet Distance.” He makes several keen observations in relation to the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Much of the post resonated with me,particularly the quotation above. I tendto be an intuitive thinker, so sometimes it takes me awhile to digest an ideaor thought. In relation to the quotationsomething about it seemed to “line up” with ideas I already owned andbelieved. It wasn’t until I heard thesecond quote from Luther that it occurred to me why. Luther essentially says something verysimilar to Handler (though 500 years earlier), while simultaneously recognizingthe Divine source/principal behind why this is the case, the reason why being grace. This of course means that both express, in varied measure, something ofDivine truth. To draw this out a bit, abit of scripture may be helpful. Some ofthe core of the truth of both of these quotations can be found in Jesus’Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard in the beginning of Matthew 20.

In the parable a vineyard owner hires workers for hisvineyard very early in the morning and agrees to pay them a days wage for adays work. Later in the morning hedecides he needs more workers and so hires more agreeing to pay themfairly. He does the same at about noon,3, and 5. At the end of the day all theworkers, those hired at 5 and those hired first thing in the morning, are paida full day’s wage, which of course raises the hackles of those who had actuallyworked all day. When presented with theprotests of unfairness, the vineyard owner replies, “I am not being unfair toyou, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. Iwant to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I havethe right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I amgenerous?” (NIV) Jesus begins thisparable by suggesting that what follows is a metaphor for the Kingdom of heaven,and ends the story by suggesting that in the story we see a dramatic renderingof the free and gracious application of the landowner’s (God the Father’s)generosity. Many will grasp onto thespiritual application of this and it’s relation to salvation, but many miss theprincipals in play in the here and now. God has the freedom to bless whomever God wants to bless throughwhatever means God chooses. If Godchooses to bless the lazy with “success” (however you might choose to defineit) that is entirely God’s prerogative. If God chooses to bless hard work, that’s God’s prerogative. One of the truths being fleshed out in thestory is that blessings are always from God. No matter how much sweat equitywe’ve invested into any given project, we cannot claim the fruit of thatlabor. The fruit is always God’s togive.

Now this is no argument against hard work, or for inactionwhile awaiting a blessing from God. Infact all of this is a merely the infrastructural support for the point I reallywant to touch on, which is that both the Lemony Snicket quote and the MartinLuther quote reference the same Biblical truth; perhaps one more intentionallythan the other (Handler describes himself as a Secular Humanist), but theviewpoint of any author, or speaker doesn’t change the truth of what they convey. Neither the person speaking or writing, northe intent of the person speaking or writing ever changes the truth of what issaid or written. The point, to quote thegreat theologian Madonna, is that “truth is where you find it.”

Because of (what I believe to be) the accuracy of thistruism, truth isn’t always easily recognizable. It’s often dressed shabbily, and associates with those of illrepute. I believe we would benefitgreatly if we were able to develop the ability to recognize truth in whateverform it presents itself. Not only wouldwe benefit personally, particularly if that recognition lead to meaningful,Christ-like action, but we would benefit those around us as we were able torecognize God at work in the culture at large and come join in that Divinelabor. Perhaps a good place to start isto take that song, movie, book, television show, or viral video back toscripture to find out where it resonates, and what it shares in common as afirst instinct. You might be surprisedat where you might find God already at work in the culture around us.

The Book of Ruth: A Love Song to the Law

2011-11-22T09:19:00.001-08:00

So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t goand glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with thewomen who work for me. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and followalong after the women. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. Andwhenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men havefilled.” – Ruth 2.8,9 (NIV)

Ruth is a wonderful and wonderfully out of place love story,stuck between the dark and bloody pseudo-nihilism of Judges and the road towarda Kingdom in 1 Samuel. It is short,sweet, and in its own archaic Hebrew way, romantic. One can make the case that Ruth is theHarlequin Romance of the Hebrew Bible, though Song of Solomon might throw its pomegranatesin the ring to be included in that conversation. The inherent drama of the love story betweenRuth and her mother-in-law Naomi, and then between Ruth and Boaz seems to havea filmic quality to it, hewing closely to many of our own cultural romanticnarratives. And the Hollywood-readyhappy ending is the icing on the cake. You can just picture Ruth riding side saddle with Boaz behind her, hisarms around her trotting into the sunset at the end. I recently finished a 2 month Bible study onRuth. In our discussions and debates I began to see another love story in thebook float to the surface, one which I had never seen before, and one which Imight suggest reveals some truly practical applications for the way those of uswho endeavor to trust and follow Christ live out our faith. This love story was one between the book’sauthor and the Hebrew law.

Now that begs the question, is this an unrequited lovestory? How can the Hebrew law love theauthor in return? It’s a good question,and one I will table for the moment and return to in a bit. I suppose a more immediate question is, “Howis there anything in the law to love?” Isn’t it just a bunch of do’s and don’ts that we don’t have to payattention to anymore because Jesus fulfilled the law? We don’t sacrifice bulls, or rams or goatsanymore, so why should we pay attention to the rest of it? I might suggest Ruth provides us with apartial answer to that question. Thepart of the law that Ruth’s author reveals his or her (though given thecircumstances most likely his) affection for concerns its concern for themarginalized, in this case the widow and the foreigner. This concern is thefoundation on which the book is constructed. So I suppose we should peel back the building and inspect thisfoundation a bit.

In Deuteronomy 10, after Moses received a second copy of thelaw (since he had destroyed the first copy on frustration), God shares thefollowing with Moses and Israel, giving a glimpse into why God had acted ontheir behalf in Egypt, and what that meant for the manner in which they were tolive their lives:

To the LORD your God belong theheavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on yourancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all thenations—as it is today. Circumcise yourhearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lordof lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality andaccepts no bribes. He defends the causeof the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you,giving them food and clothing. And youare to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. –Deuteronomy 10.14-19 (NIV)

This is the heart of God’s actions on behalf of Israel,including God’s provision of the law. Infact, I would suggest this is the heart that beats at the center of the Lawbecause this is the heart of God. Godchooses to work through a vehicle that doesn’t yet exist (Israel) cultivatingand maturing it through interactions with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When it does begin to sprout it grows as amarginalized community of slaves in service to a political powerhouse in Egypt. God’s choice of Israel here was entirely based inGod’s absolute freedom, and God’s grace. God goes on to suggest that Israel’s actions should mirrorGod’s in this way: that they value and love those on the margins of theirculture and social structures, in this case the fatherless, the widow and theforeigner. After they are freed fromtheir slavery in Egyptand have a land of their own God concretizes this even further in Leviticus 19and 23 where God shares this directive, “When you reap the harvest of yourland, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings ofyour harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing amongyou.” (Leviticus 23.22 NIV) Thesepassages form the foundational scriptural and ethical assumptions on which Ruthwas written.

You may ask why I think the author of Ruth loved thislaw. The first clue to the author’s loveof the Law is the story’s historical setting, “In the days when the Judgesruled.” These days were practically lawlessand tragically violent. The book ofJudges itself characterizes this era as a time where “everyone did what wasright in their own eyes.” Needless tosay this is not an era characterized by a widespread love for or adherence tothe Hebrew Law. Yet here we have Boaznot only adhering to it, but going above and beyond the Law’s requirements. He acts as if he is more concerned with theheart of the law than with the law itself. He not only does what is right by its stated requirements, but does whatis right by the widow (Naomi and Ruth) and the foreigner (Ruth) acting inaccordance with the love of the God that loved Israel when they had done nothingto earn that love. The law here is, inessence, the bare minimum of what is required to behave in a way which isconsistent with the character of God. Totruly act in accordance with the heart of God one must go far beyond the bareminimum, which is what Boaz does. Thisgoing above and beyond is the second clue toward revealing the author’s love ofthe law.

As I asserted earlier Boaz lived in a time where the law wasbarely followed. In fact, truth be told,the Hebrews had a tough time consistently following the law’s moral, social andritualistic requirements through the whole of the Biblical narrative. What we see in Boaz’s “above and beyond-ness”in Ruth is what the practice of the Law was supposed to look like. It’s the ideal. We get to see God’s intent for the law putinto practice. You not only have awidow, Naomi, who was at the margins of that patriarchal society because of herdependence on her husband and sons for her provision and survival (and she’slost her husband and both of her sons), but you also have a widowed foreignerwho was even further on the margins because of her lack of standing within thecommunity. The story places them at themercy of the function of the law, and in this (I would suggest rare) instancethe law works as it was intended. Whenit does, we get to see, as if acted out on a stage, the glimpses of what theHebrew culture could have been had they kept to the law, which would have been aplace that rendered visible the loving heart of God. (And I didn’t even get to the concept andpractice the kinsman-redeemer)

So what does this mean for us? So the author of Ruth loved the Hebrew Law,why should we? I would suggest we shouldlove the Law because it allows us to “see” the inside of God. In this Law God rips open God’s chest toreveal the passion of God’s metaphorical heart. God reveals a love for the humble, the inchoate, and the powerless. God goes out of the way to reach out tothem/us. I would suggest that God’sheart has not changed in the years since either the giving of the Law or thewriting or Ruth. So if we’re to lovewhat God loves, that must include those on the margins in our own culture. At the beginning I acknowledged that the Lawcould not love the author back, but the God of the Law can and does, and Ibelieve the recording of this story is part of the author’s recognition of andreturning of that love, for all of posterity to see. So I would suggest this is the/a practicalapplication to be taken from Ruth: It’s up to us to allow that passionate loveto seep into us and the experience of our relationship with God and then allowit to flow out of us as we learn to love and embrace with our actions thatwhich God loves and embraces. The morethis becomes part of our experience of faith, the more we may find the hands ofBoaz revealing themselves in our actions, and we can all agree, the world coulduse a few more Boaz’s couldn’t it?

***The picture above is a reproduction of a woodcut done byMargaret Adams Parker from the book Whoare you My Daughter?: Reading Ruth Through Image and Text. In it Theologian Ellen F. Davis provides herown translation of and commentary on the book of Ruth, inter-cut with MargaretAdams Parker’s wood cuts. It is highlyrecommended.

Heaven, Hell and the Handbaskets for Each

2011-11-15T10:25:00.001-08:00

...left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion withentropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse butthat there's nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task inthe present...is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the finalday, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship andmission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”
― N.T. Wright

The world is not going to hell in a hand basket. “What?” you say? “Have you seen the poverty in Africa? Have youseen the individual and corporate greed run amok? Teens are killed for their shoes. Children are abused by those they trust. Pornography is a billion dollarindustry. The rich are healthy. The sick are poor. We waste preciousresources for our creature comforts. Those on the margins of survival are systematically corralled on themargins by those who benefit from their hardship. The defenseless are slaughtered. Government chips away at freedom as ifthey’re sanding off old paint in order to apply their own new color scheme. And there’s a Democrat in the WhiteHouse.” To all of that I say, “Ok thereare a few good points there.” It’s easyto see that the world around us is a wreck. It’s easy to look at the world and become discouraged, and even todespair. I’ve been there. Sometimes I visit discouragement anddespair. Sometimes they visit me. When we listen to their voices, the world canseem like a pretty dark and foreboding place, and in all reality it is. However there is another voice speaking intothe wreck, one which should be recognizable to those who have pursued a trustin Christ. It’s a still small voice,singing a redemptive melody. It’s hardto hear, and can often be entirely inaudible, but I would suggest that ananchored faith that that voice exists and is active in its song is essential toboth preventing our own despair, and to breathing hope into the larger culturalconversation. I’d like to focus in on the theology that is the back beat ofthat song and draw a few practical applications out of it, if you’d be willingto humor me and my metaphors.

The hub around which this wheel turns is the notion that Godis in the process of completing God’s redemptive work in the world. We get snap shot images in scripture of theshape and feel of this completed work. See Isaiah 25, 35, 61 and 65, and Revelation 19-22. If we were looking for words that we couldglean and reconstruct from these passages that would help provide that feel, wemight come up with: peace, justice, equality, love, joy, sanctuary, andcommunity. In these passages God revealsto us how the story ends; or to push the music metaphor a bit, the song, orbetter, the symphony God has been composing, conducting, and perhaps evenimprovising through history has a glorious end which God is longing to sharewith this beloved world. What must beremembered if we’re not to be overcome by the voices of discouragement anddespair is that this symphony is still being written, and those of us livinghere now are caught in one of the symphony’s taut movements, full of dissonanceand unresolved tensions. If we allowthese dissonances to define all the symphony is in our minds, we lose thebeauty and attractiveness of the story being told through the music. This, I believe is part of the reason Godlets humanity in on the end of the story, to provide a modicum of hope that theunresolved tensions that surround us do not define the whole of reality. What is even more beautiful is that God attimes allows us to hear hints or foreshadows of the glorious conclusion that iswaiting at the symphony’s end, both in scripture (see the Resurrection) and inour experiences. God even allows andrequests us to participate in the playing of this song.

Thus, our efforts to learn the prior movements and gloriousend of this symphony, and recreate them using the instruments God provides(ourselves) are a good part of what we have to offer the world around us. To unwind the metaphor a bit, the moreChristians share the good news of God’s self revelation of the depths of God’slove for humanity revealed through the life, death and resurrection of Christand the more we embody that love and the peace, justice, equality, joy,sanctuary, and community that characterize the symphony’s conclusion the morewe get to participate in the still small voice’s part in the larger culturalconversation. It’s then that we not onlyfight our own despair, trusting the promise of the symphony’s finale, but playour part in the symphony, attracting people to its composer and come alongsideGod as a voice of hope, continually singing to the world. It’s then that we learn and trust that theproverbial hand basket is not heading toward entropy and destruction but isactually heading toward a bright, glorious and divine future.

Occupy Church?

2011-10-22T19:50:00.000-07:00

The “Occupy Wall Street” protests have captured my imagination,and probably not for the reasons you might suspect. There is a lot to be said for the collectiveindignance being articulated by the Occupiers in relation to earnings and wealthdisparity. On a side note, for all thevoices that speak of their expectations to the contrary, they are revealingthat “Gen Y” does possess a moral center. It may not be your moral center, but they are making moral argumentsagainst the current economic construct. Now,there is also something to be said for the oddness of much of the protest, andmany of the protestors. Another strikeagainst the Occupiers is their difficulty in succinctly articulating either allthat they’re for, or even all they’re against. They seem to represent a pretty diverse group of interests who seem toshare in common a frustration with a financial system they see as constructedby the rich and powerful for the benefit of the rich and powerful. Well, they seem to share that frustration,and a collective interest in horizontal as opposed to hierarchicalorganization. This is actually whatinterests me most, particularly in relation to the church.

I’m intrigued because the occupiers are embodying a means oforganizing I’ve been fascinated by for years, particularly in regards to how itrelates to the church. I was introducedto this idea of a horizontal organization of church by Tom Sine’s Mustard Seed Versus McWorld, and NeilCole’s Organic Church: Growing FaithWhere Life Happens. Both suggest aradical rethinking of how we organize church, creating smaller communitystructures, less dependent on brick and mortar facilities, and allowing forgreater spontaneity and liquidity in movement. In different ways they argue that hierarchical structures have thestrong potential to slow the church’s work as those involved commitconsiderable amounts of time to both the organization and the facilitiesassociated with the organization. I haveto say their ideas held and continue to hold my imagination. As much as I love church as I’ve known it,and as much as I love being a part of the organization and the familyatmosphere of the organization, it has always seemed rather unwieldy tome. The trouble is I’ve had a hard timeimagining what an alternative would look like. I even tried to find ways to take these ideas from the page to the realworld; from the construction of an intentional community to alternativeliturgies and ecclesial structures, without much success. Enter the “Occupy Wall Street” folks andtheir experiment in “horizontal democracy.”

This is what seems to me to be at the heart of theirprotests, and the one thing shared in common, a commitment to shy away fromhierarchy. You can see this in theirdecision making process, attempting to decide by group consensus as opposed tomajority vote. Granted it takes longerand less gets “done”, but by doing so they embody the alternative to that whichis the root of their indignance, the power of the few over the many. I appreciate this commitment to live thisphilosophy given my interest in the idea of Incarnation. Given the importance of Incarnation toChristianity, this should get our attention. Their message in reality is their action. Because of this the value of this protestthus far, at least as I see it, isn’t in their propositions, but in theiractions. I pray that some day the samecan be said of me.

Dry Bones, Illuminated Manuscripts, and Visual Hermeneutics

2011-10-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

“Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hearthe word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord Godto these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I willlay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you withskin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I amthe Lord.” So I prophesied as I had been commanded. –From Ezekiel 37

I suspect there’s a good chance you have not heard of the St. John’s Bible. It is the first hand written, illuminated Bible to be produced since theinvention of the printing press in the 16^th century, around 500years ago. It is also the first handwritten copy of the Bible ever produced in English. I learned about it as part of a gathering Iattended where the focus was (surprise, surprise) theology and the arts. I have to say the book is stunning in itscraftsmanship, and imagination. If youhave time, please click on the link above and explore the Bible. You can actually turn through the Bible’s pageson their website. The illuminations arestunning aesthetically, and do an amazing job of opening up the text itilluminates to a type of visual hermeneutic. At any rate as part of a seminar I attended in relation to this Bible, Iparticipated in a community Lectio Divina, which is a Benedictine meditativepractice of reading and praying through scripture. It’s typically done alone, but the directorof the St. John Bible Project, Tim Ternes, led us through a modifiedarrangement of the practice where a portion of a text would be read, and thosein the seminar would speak out phrases, words, or groups of words from thetext. It became something of an open,communal, improv-like, free form scriptural poetry reading. Our text for this exercise was Ezekiel37.1-14, The Valley of the Dry Bones. Asa group we drew a lot more out of the text than I have ever personally gottenout of, or seen in the text before. There’s one concept in particular that stuck out to me that I’d like toshare here; not the main point of the text, but something the text and theproduction of the Bible had in common, the importance of human agency in materiallyand dramatically rendering God’s heart and desires visible to a world bound totheir physical senses.

The text itself is a dynamic drama born out of theimagination of God and shared with Ezekiel. Ezekiel of course then shared it with those around him, and it wasrecorded in writing for the benefit of posterity. What interests me is what the vision revealsabout that which God holds dear, and the part God expects Ezekiel to play inthis drama of disclosure.

As the vision unfolds to Ezekiel, God reveals a deep lovefor the Hebrew people, and a desire that they live and experience the type offull life associated with living in the awareness that they are lovedabsolutely and unconditionally. Ideally,the product of this awareness is trust and hope. At the end of the vision God indicates toEzekiel that the entire purpose of the vision was that the Hebrews would, “knowthat I, the Lord, have spoken and will act.” This action is entirely God’s initiative, unmeritedand on their behalf. God essentiallyflings open the metaphorical Divine ribs and reveals a heart beating with amadly overabundant, uncontainable love for these people. God allows Ezekiel and by extension us to seethe Divine insides so to speak, and we are left with the knowledge of thesecurity and thus comfort of God’s love. Look closer though. How is itthat we get to “see” this? How is thismade visible? We can’t seefeelings. We can only see actions. So who is acting here? Ezekiel.

In the vision Ezekiel is commanded to prophecy to thebones. God doesn’t resurrect the bonesdirectly, but employs Ezekiel as a mediator. In doing so, God reveals God’s love through Ezekiel’s obedient actions. There is a similarity here to Moses’experience at the Red Sea. In Exodus 14 God tells Moses to lift up hishands to both part the seas and return them to “normal.” In both instances the text records that Moseslifted his hands, and then God parted the waters, and then returned them. God didn’t act until Moses did. God didn’t return flesh and life to the bonesin the vision until Ezekiel prophesied to them.

God has left us and the Church of our times with many acommand as well, revealed through prophets, the teachings of Jesus and theletters of the New Testament. God I believe still wants to reveal the Divineheart that beats with a madly overabundant, uncontainable love for all thepeoples of the Earth. But God it seemslimits the initiation of the revelation of that love to the text of Bible(which at its core is a result of obedient human action) and acts of those onthe stage of the world. Our job as thosetrusting in that Divine love is to use our agency, our choices, and our giftsto participate with God in revealing that love to others through our words,yes, but even more so through our actions as they relate to our attempts toobey, and dramatically live out the commands God has shared in scripture. In doing so, we also become something of a“visual hermeneutic” ourselves, in a manner similar to that of theilluminations in the St. John Bible. In the same way that calligrapher and artistDonald Jackson, and the creators of that Bible used their agency, choices and gifts to produce an object that createsthe opportunity of Divine encounter, so our lives lived in loving actions ofobedience to God can create that opportunity as well. Notice I said earlier it seems that Godlimits the “initiation” of the revelation of God’s love to our obedientaction. Once we act it seems God stepsin and does what only God can do, bring life where there was death, and hopewhere the was despair. That seems like apretty good deal to me, and one I want to be a part of.

(The picture is from the Exodus 20 illumination in the St. John's Bible)

Holy Fools: Singing the Praises of Judas?

2011-09-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lady Gaga’s song Judasis very Lady Gaga-ish; brash, aggressive, contentious, yet engaging, andperhaps even thoughtful. The songreveals her familiarity with the Madonna playbook. Step 1: Create a song charged with Christianimagery intended to toe the line of the church’s perception of irreverence and blasphemy. Step 2: Release that song during HolyWeek. Tempest meet tea cup. Though, totheir credit, a good many in the church have learned to recognize these publicrelation slights of hand and refuse to be baited into the furor they may havebeen worked up to in the past. What isnot common in the church is the vision to see that the use of Christian imageryin the arts and pop culture, even if deemed offensive by some, is often oneside of a spiritual conversation waiting to be had. Here Lady Gaga is considering how to handlebetrayal and forgiveness, using the Biblical account of Judas as hermetaphor. This is Lady Gaga inviting thebiblical narrative into a very broad cultural conversation, engaging notionsthat form the heart of the gospel. Now Iunderstand the discomfort. She issinging she’s in love with the person who betrayed Christ to the Sanhedrin, theRomans and his execution while pushing the bounds of tailored modesty. I was uncomfortable the first time I heard itmyself. But let’s take a look at thissong and attempt to put aside our discomfort, and possibly offense, and see ifwe can’t open ourselves to a more constructive conversation.

So let’s hear from the Lady herself. What does the song mean to her? She says,

'Judas' is a metaphor and an analogyabout forgiveness and betrayal and things that haunt you in your life and how Ibelieve that it's the darkness in your life that ultimately shines andilluminates the greater light that you have upon you…the song is about washingthe feet of both good and evil and understanding and forgiving the demons fromyour past in order to move into the greatness of your future.

Now the purpose of this little post isn’t to critique thecontent of her take on the Judas narrative, but simply to point out that she isactively engaged and wrestling with it, and to engage in a bit of the otherside of the conversation. Let’srecognize that she is acknowledging the importance of forgiveness. In the song you find her wrestling with howto treat someone you’ve forgiven, yet who continues to betray you. The song recognizes the social consequencesof that type of relationship as she continues to attempt to constructively loveher betrayer, yet finds herself clinging to him or her instead. This is the struggle of many a co-dependentrelationship. This is also a questionoften asked by those in the Church as well. The blanket availability of forgiveness for all taught in the Gospel,and Christ’s command to axiomatically forgive individuals 70x7 times for thewrongs they do you is something Christians struggle to live out in theirlives. The absoluteness of this circleof inclusion plays out dramatically in the Judas narrative as Jesus on thenight Judas betrays him, and knowing of the betrayal, washes Judas’ feet. Jesus loved and served Judas to the end. How do we as Christians forgive our betrayerswithout encouraging further betrayal, or should the second half of thatquestion even be a consideration? Sometimes we Christians have the same questions of the Bible as theculture around us.

Additionally, Lady Gaga isn’t just engaging scripture, she’salso engaging the Christian tradition. Interestingly enough Gaga asserts that she is “obsessed” with Christianand Religious art. In the chorus of thesong she identifies herself as a holy fool. Now this really doesn’t have much meaning to Evangelicals and otherProtestants, but the holy fool seems to have greater relevance the further eastyou travel in the Christian world. Thisnotion has its roots in medieval Christianity. According to our friends at the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions,holy fools are, “Figures who subvert prevailing orthodoxy and orthopraxis inorder to point to the truth which lies beyond immediate conformity.” These were figures who were often employed inthe extravagant late medieval European Passion Plays. At any rate she is drawing on this traditionand casting the “character” singing the song (though I strongly suspect this ishow Gaga sees herself) as someone attempting to engage the Church withperspectives they just aren’t comfortable with. Whatever you think of her methods of accomplishing this, shouldn’t we inthe Church be open to hear from those who place themselves outside of thechurch, or at its margins? Isn’t this aconstructive way of learning how we’re seen through their eyes? The Spirit works in strange ways, perhapseven through holy fools.

I would suggest that we ignore these opportunities forcultural spiritual engagement at our own peril. For us to unilaterally wash our hands of or write off these types of artistsand songs and films and shows and other pop culture texts is to pass a type of overconfidentjudgment on both the creation and the artist. Humility would suggest a more measured approach. Just as the group U2 ponders the fate ofJudas at the end of their song about his final days, Until the End of the World, we too will have to wait until the endof the world to determine their ultimate value. But in the same way that we may ultimately be surprised by Judas’ fate,which is entirely dependent upon God’s justice and mercy, we may also besurprised in retrospect at the value of lovingly engaging the button pushersand holy fools in our cultures.

9/11 and the Dangers of Conflation

2011-09-17T19:08:00.000-07:00

Conflation: the process or result of fusing items into one entity.

10 years... September 11 I think will always be a scar that aches a bit, with the ache asserting itself more aggressively when that date rolls around every year. The round numbered anniversaries of course tend to be occasions to more consciously rub that ache and remember what that day means to us. This is one of those years. Christians living in the US remember along with everyone else. We were no less affected by the violence because of our faith, and struggled to make sense of the senselessness of it all just like all of our neighbors. Our anguish, fear and even our injuries and deaths were no different than those of our fellow Americans who don’t count themselves as followers of Christ. While we all experienced the attacks as Americans, those of us who identify ourselves with Christ also experienced the attacks as Christians, meaning both identities experienced the trauma simultaneously. I would suggest this experience and our response to it reveals a tension that exists between these two identities which plays itself out in our experiences of both our common communities and our communities of faith. I would suggest our attempts to resolve this tension between our Christian identity and our American identity can sometimes carry us to places which are dangerous to both our faith and our nation. It’s this danger, which also plays itself out in the shadow of this anniversary, that I think I’d like to briefly survey here.

I want to acknowledge up front that there are a lot of sacred cows in play here, and the probability of divergent takes and visions are a given, particularly given the brevity of this format. This will in no way be an even remotely exhaustive, comprehensive, or thorough exploration. It’s just a few thoughts on this tension played out in 500-600 words or so. That being said, I want to begin on the civic side of this tension and acknowledge the Biblical ideas and principles that found their way into much of the mythic narrative of our founding and into many of our founding documents. We are a nation born partially out of the frustration with the sectarian persecutions and wars which took place in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. This “new” land presented people of marginalized faith practices with economic and religious opportunities not accessible to them in their old home. Even as the Enlightenment pushed the theological heart of these nascent ideas toward the margins of public discourse in the 18th century, the country’s founding generation still leaned on the existing religious, philosophical and linguistic framework as they constructed the governing bodies and institutions of this country. Many were men and women of faith themselves. Many were not. But most kept to some form of faith, which was part of our collective national heritage to that point.

It’s because of this framework, and the founders’ choices to work within it that Jefferson is able to write, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Jefferson is building on a Christian theological foundation, asserting that all are created equal because of a common Divine Creator who values all equally, while simultaneously tweaking those constructs to reflect contemporary Enlightenment thinking, citing, “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” just a few lines prior as the core foundation upon which his Declaration of Independence was being built. The point here is that this nation was built on a unique foundation of faith which was already morphing before the Constitution was even written. The nation was built on a civic faith in these ideals which was not necessarily a theologically “orthodox” faith. Christianity here was politically engaged toward a civil end, much as it has been throughout its history to both noble and ignoble ends, from Constantine to Jim Crow.

In contrast, the Christian experience, both individually and collectively, particularly as it is described in the New Testament, seems to be markedly unlike this civic faith. In fact both Jesus and Paul seem to acknowledge the tension in loyalties that exists within one choosing to follow after Christ, with both counseling their listeners and readers to show respect for and demonstrate appropriate loyalty to those in positions of civic authority and the political institutions they represent, Jesus in Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 20 and Paul in Romans 13. However, these same readers and listeners are also instructed to actively resist immoral and corrupt cultural practices, replacing them with moral and just ones, which will of course have subversive political implications and thus reveals the tension I spoke of in the opening paragraph. This tension seems to be assumed in the Bible. It seems to be a subset of the larger tension between the Kingdom Jesus speaks of and every political establishment that demonstrates little or no interest in that kingdom.

The difficulty we as Americans face is that our political establishment does have some vestigial and perhaps even some active interest in the principles and actions that characterize Jesus’ Kingdom. I would suggest however that this seeming slackening of that tension is more apparent than it is real. Anecdotally, if this were not the case the reigning general consensus among Evangelicals regarding the state of our culture and government would probably not include the words “hell” or “hand basket.” So where does this leave us? I would suggest that Biblically speaking, this tension between the Christian and their government, even if that government takes a welcoming stance toward them, is a good thing and that some of the confusion we often feel and experience, which often makes it way into our liturgies around civic holidays and remembrances such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and 9/11, has its roots in our attempts to resolve or work out this tension. We are right to want to recognize the faith of our country’s founders. We are right to recognize the unique role the ideas that rose from that faith have played in our national and political institutions. But we do a disservice to both our faith and our nation when we merge the two into one entity, and then merge both into one personal identity. Without the tension we lose the ability to speak prophetically to those in power. We become more easily co-opted by those in power as a means to accomplish the ends of this kingdom. And most dangerous of all we begin to lose our identity and the unique identity of Jesus’ Kingdom. This is dangerous then not only to us, but also for our nation in that it loses the unique Christian voice that in many ways serves as its conscience. Attempting to resolve this tension allows it to be quieted and silenced. Something to keep in mind as we struggle to live with both identities…

Ruth Orkin and the Male Gaze

2011-08-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

I was struck by this photo recently, American Girl in Italy. There was an article on its 60th birthday, and the photos subject, Ninalee Craig was offering her remembrances of the photo. The photo was taken by Ruth Orkin in Florence, Italy in 1951. The two women were both traveling through Europe by themselves and met as part of their travels. They decided to take photos capturing the experience of traveling as a single woman in Europe at the time, and thus this photo was born. Now 83, Craig is adamant that the photo is not a negative symbol of harassment, or anything in that vein saying instead, “It’s a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time!” This is a great example of the hermeneutical eyes a person brings to an image. The first time I saw the image I felt the men were a threat, though she suggests they never crossed any lines of inappropriateness. What most struck me about the photo after spending some time with it is the hermeneutical power of the male gaze.

I’m not going to delve too deeply into this concept, partially because it’s something I’m actively wrestling with. But I do want to throw it out there for conversation… The notion of the male gaze first draws on French Psychologist Jacques Lacan’s notion of “the gaze”, the realization that you are a visible object to others. The idea is that our identity and actions are partially shaped by our experience and awareness of others watching us. This also comes in to play then in critiquing visual culture, or the images that bombard us every day. British film critic and theorist Laura Mulvey used this notion of the gaze to help construct a manner of describing what she perceived to be a primarily male-centric image creating construct in film making. She suggested films are made primarily from the perspective of a male subject, which sees women as objects of desire. Thus from her perspective films tend to codify the cultural gender constructs of men as actively looking and women as being passively looked at. This is a bit of what is rolling around in my head as I look at Orkin’s image. What is of particular interest for me is the manner in which the male gaze affects, and interacts with feminine identity.

Now I know as a man I’m treading on dangerous territory broaching anything having to do with feminine identity. What do I know about that? I’ll admit I know far less than I probably should. That being said, I do want to comment on what I perceive to be the influence the male gaze has on identity in both masculine and feminine circles. I find Craig’s commentary on the different reactions she gets to the photograph from men and women telling. She says, “Men who see the picture always ask me: Was I frightened? Did I need to be protected? Was I upset? They always have a manly concern for me. Women, on the other hand, look at that picture, and the ones who have become my friends will laugh and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t the Italians wonderful? ... They make you feel appreciated!” Her experience is that men are concerned (perhaps because they best know dark potential of the male gaze) and women can tend to appreciate the experience of being the object of the gaze. It seems to me that the different reactions from men and women reveal something of the affects of the gaze. I’m not sure I’m prepared to go further than that right now, but I’m becoming increasingly aware of the eyes I’m prompted to look through when viewing images in film, TV, photography and online.

Of course this is an entirely anecdotal observation from one woman, but I think we, particularly those who are Christians and believe that men and women are both created in the image of God, ought to be mindful of how the simple perspective of the images that surround us affect our experience of being the image of God. Did God create women to be the passive objects of the male gaze? Theologically I would strongly lean toward “No” on that answer, however I must confess that sadly my actions, and the actions of those Christians around me reveal no strong inclination to be critical of or even aware this construct. Perhaps this will help with the awareness side of that equation. Anyone want to join me in the attempt to push back?

Ryan Lizza, Michele Bachmann and the Francis Schaeffer I Know

2011-08-18T10:16:00.000-07:00

Each generation of the church in each setting has the responsibility of communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting. – Francis Schaeffer

Ryan Lizza’s recent The New Yorker article chronicling the evolution of Minnesota Representative and Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann’s thought and faith as they relate both to her private person and to her actions in the public arena of politics reveals her strong and foundational affinity for evangelist, apologist and theologian Francis Schaeffer. Not so coincidentally (I am writing about this…) I to share a strong and foundational affinity with Mr. Schaeffer. I was struck though by the different shapes our respective affinities have taken; and even though I believe Schaeffer becomes distorted when seen through Mr. Lizza’s eyes (he suggests Schaeffer advocated the violent overthrow of the government, which I have a hard time finding in his writings), his article reveals something of the tension within Schaeffer’s thought, and by extension within much Evangelical thought, and reveals some of Evangelicalism’s imperfections in the process, which I would like to sift through, consider and perhaps offer a suggestion or two on some Schaefferian means (as seen through my eyes) to wrestle with them.

I was introduced to Francis Schaeffer while attending an Evangelical college in the early 90’s. We read his book How Should We Then Live? as a part of “Western Man” (the course’s title) which was a World History course. It was fascinating reading for me. He made connections between culture and theology that resonated with my spirituality at the time, and put into words thoughts I had not been able to articulate. I came to the book as a lover of the arts, primarily music and film at the time, though from a background that viewed the arts with great suspicion. He took the arts seriously, respecting them as valuable in and of themselves, and as a window into understanding culture, philosophy and theology. In addition in his book Art and the Bible he chides the Evangelical Church for its latent Platonism, valuing the spiritual over the physical. He instead suggests that the two (the spiritual and physical) make up one whole reality, thus their interpenetration must become a core assumption in order to understand the fullness of a person. Because of this the physical and therefore the arts have value theologically. Schaeffer pointed me down the road I’ve traveled to play in the intersection of theology and the arts.

There is however the other side of Schaeffer, the one that grows out of that last set of ideas that not only values the physical world of the arts, but also values the culture that produces them, and believes that culture should fully reflect what he would call a “Biblical Worldview”. This is the Schaeffer Mr. Lizza suggests Mrs. Bachmann, and much of Evangelicalism has embraced, and the truth is, in spite of the distortions in Mr. Lizza’s understanding of Shaeffer’s means of accomplishing this end, he’s right about his basic assertion. Lizza uses the label “Dominionism” to describe their position, suggesting that Evangelicals who hold to Schaeffer’s ideas believe that Christians are expected to shape and mold the secular cultural and political institutions so that they embody the “true truth” (Schaeffer’s description) of the Bible. And here we reveal the tension I wrote of earlier.

Schaeffer wants to respect and value the arts and culture as expressions of the “mannish-ness of man” (Schaeffer’s description) but at the same time wants to shape them so that they embody the truth found in the Bible, which is a fine goal. Folks with dearly held beliefs tend to articulate strong critiques of culture and politics and seek to shape them to more closely resemble those beliefs. The issue of tension here within Schaeffer’s framework is that Schaeffer seems to want to travel down two mutually divergent roads. He seems to want to take New York Yankee Catcher Yogi Berra’s advice and upon coming to the fork in the road, take it. At one end of the tension is the absolute belief in the absolute truth of God as revealed through the Bible calling it, “the absolute infallible Word of God.” At the other end of this tension is the call for the Christian to love those around them in a self gifting, self sacrificial manner. At this end Schaeffer acknowledges, “Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.” The article tends to assert that Schaeffer’s followers, and perhaps Schaeffer himself tend to tip the scale, weighing truth as more valuable than love. Granted Schaeffer suggests the emphasis on truth is loving, writing, “Truth always carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation nevertheless.” From this perspective it’s unloving to abandon people, through apathy, lethargy or fear to untruth. It’s clear, given the existence of this tension that Schaeffer himself wrestled to balance these apparently competing interests. So let’s do a little (very little given the brevity of the blog) wrestling ourselves.

If one holds that both sides of this tension are equally valuable, which I believe Schaeffer would, then the question becomes one of means as opposed to motivation. One would have to unwaveringly hold to this absolute truth while actively and imitatively embodying that truth in the love of God revealed through Jesus Christ, essentially recreating the Incarnation. Jesus simultaneously through both words and actions revealed and embodied the truth and heart of the Father. It seems that Mr. Lizza, and by extension others in the culture, see only the propositions of truth and not the divine heart of love when viewing Mr. Schaeffer and Mrs. Bachmann. Granted some of that vision comes and goes with faith; however this article begs the question of whether Schaeffer (the theologian/evangelist/apologist) or Bachmann (the politician) were or are, “communicating the gospel in understandable terms, considering the language and thought-forms of that setting.” I would humbly suggest that they fell and continue to fall short here given their emphasis on the propositional side of truth. The gospel is more than a set of facts or principals. To articulate the propositions of truth without embodying them in the actions of self gifting love distorts them, making them exactly what Schaeffer called them, “the ugliest thing in the world.” The understandable terms that communicate to this generation must include both.

Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Samson: The Blog I Didn't Write

2011-08-08T08:57:00.000-07:00

Have you ever seen something that wasn’t there? You know, you see something out of the corner of your eye, perhaps a face outside your window, and think, “What IS that?” and when you turn for a double take you see it’s just the leaves on the tree. Well, that’s a great metaphor for my experience trying to write this particular blog entry. I thought I saw something, but upon further review, it just wasn’t what I thought it was. Let me back up a bit and walk through how I arrived at this place of suspicion.

A few weeks ago while listening to a sermon on Samson, the really strong guy from the book of Judges, I was struck by what I thought were really strong parallels between Samson’s story and the over-arching Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader narrative told over the course of all six Star Wars films. (Yes this is the type of stuff that crosses my mind during sermons… welcome to my world.) In both cases there were prophecies concerning their lives. For Samson it was that he would be a Nazirite and deliver his people from the Philistines and for Anakin the prophecy was that he would bring balance to the Force. As they grew they were both set apart for service, for Samson as a Nazirite and for Anakin as Jedi. They both embody a certain impetuousness and impulsiveness. Both are often more likely to behave how they wished then how they ought. They both fly into murderous rages, slaughtering large numbers of people, Samson with the Philistines and the jawbone of an ass, and Anakin with the Tusken Raiders and of course his lightsaber and the Force. They both suffer disabling injuries because of their poor decisions. Samson has his eyes gouged out, and Anakin lost his legs and arm and was badly burned. Finally they both end up fulfilling the prophecies told of them through their respective somewhat self-sacrificial deaths. Slam dunk right? It’s obvious George Lucas was just retelling Samson’s story through Darth Vader. A younger version of me might have seen these intriguing parallels and run with it, but after a second look I just couldn’t justify that strong a relationship between the two.

Granted there are undeniable parallels here; however upon further review there is perhaps as much Faust or Hercules as there is Samson in Vader. For that matter the ancient stories, events and mythologies that pre-date the record of Samson’s exploits in Judges may have had an influence on the shape the telling of Samson’s story takes. The point being that every story or narrative borrows from and is in conversation with the stories and narratives that surround it and precede it. To quote Solomon, generally credited as the writer of Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” To suggest that Vader’s story IS a spot on retelling of Samson’s just doesn’t do either justice. Interestingly, it seems to me that the core of the parallels between the two characters lies in the flawed, self-absorbed nature of their temperaments. Granted there are plot parallels as well, but they might not seem so analogous without the personal similarity.

At any rate, I wanted to share my thought process and suggest that seeing the similarities and analogies that live in the stories all around us as they converse with both contemporary and historical narratives including scripture is, I believe, helpful and necessary to building appropriate hermeneutical contexts as we try to make sense of them. I also wanted to suggest caution in that process when the desire to find allegorical parallels instead of analogous ones presents itself. Allegory may be a helpful tool in the belt of pedagogy, but it can greatly curtail the larger narrative conversation. With that said, any interesting narrative parallels that jump out to you that you’d like to share?

Whatever is Lovely Part V: The Long and Winding Road Home

2011-07-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things – Philippians 4.8 (NIV)

So where does this leave us? How does the Incarnation, the extra-propositional nature of truth and Theo-Drama help us in practically applying Paul’s admonitions here? As I stated in the introductory portion of this extended blog I’ve come to believe the shortest most efficient line between two points is typically or perhaps often the least godly/Biblical route to take. Hopefully, the winding routes of my reasoning have been a fitting embodiment of that notion… for better or for worse. The over-arching point being that simply avoiding a story, film, painting, recording, etc because it isn’t true, right, pure or lovely at first blush means you miss the possibility of seeing generously as God does, or experiencing unconventional encounters with truth, or learning to act out the divine role gifted you by God. From this perspective encounters with the arts and pop culture become exercises in finding the truth, nobility, loveliness and admirability (yes I believe I made up that word) that exists and lives in them, and in those that created them. It becomes an opportunity to think on such things, meditating ultimately on the generosity and graciousness of a God who still sees flashes of these things in God’s own divine handiwork.

As a final thought I want to acknowledge that approaching the arts and pop culture texts from this perspective still doesn’t provide a free reign to engage any and all arts and texts. There are many texts I cannot engage because of the emotional and spiritual damage they cause me. The best example of this for me is slasher films. I can’t watch them because, one I squirm too much, and two because the graphic depictions of brutality and gore stay with me in a way that I feel is very unhealthy. I can’t say however that these films are bad for everyone. I know many people who engage with these narratives and the ideas they embody in healthy ways. And many of these films do engage with big picture ideas. (Think Hostel, Saw, or Scream) But as much as I might admire the engagement of these big picture ideas from a distance I can’t relate to them at close range. Others can’t engage art or texts that overtly portray or describe sexuality. Some can’t engage arts or texts that arouse doubt, or fear in them. We all have our weaknesses, but I might suggest the lines of appropriateness are drawn in each individual as opposed to absolute lines drawn for every person in every situation, which perhaps is a topic for another blog down the road. At any rate I hope that this little excursion has shown that Paul’s request to the Philippians here is more by road and less interstate than is readily apparent.

Whatever is Lovely Part IV: All the World's a Stage

2011-07-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

Whatever is Lovely Part IV: All the World's a Stage
The third and final doctrinal lens I want to employ to help clearly see the true, noble, right, pure and lovely all around us, particularly in the arts and pop culture is the lens of theo-drama. This of course borrows/depends heavily on Balthasar’s concept of theo-drama, but I will swerve and sway a bit from the centerline of his thought. What is of use in understanding Paul here is the story God is telling through history, that is the drama of redemption that has been playing out since the construction of this stage we call Earth. If we were to interpret Paul here in the manner of the “straw man” I built in the first part of this blog, then there’s much of the divine story Christians should avoid. Perhaps we shouldn’t celebrate the deception of Jael or Samson’s lack of nobility or the systemic injustices of Solomon or Abraham’s impurity or the vile ugliness and violence of the crucifixion. And don’t mention Song of Solomon. Just don’t.

These segments of the story God is telling recorded in the Bible are not always noble, right, pure or lovely. In fact they’re often the stories of great wrongs committed by those committed to God. The stories aren’t always uplifting, and are often ambiguous at best (read Judges and Ecclesiastes). At worst they curiously seem to lionize racial violence (Joshua), and reveal a God who likes to gamble (Job). These evils and ambiguities however are all a part of the larger story of redemption God is telling. God does not attempt to clean up this messiness. In fact it seems to be central to the divine narrative. So we should explore this muddled tangle of vagaries and see what it might reveal to us about both the story of God and the God of the story.

We are going to work backwards a little bit here, and start with some basic dramatic theory and work toward its intersection with theology and what that means to us practically as we interact with the arts and pop culture texts around us. According to Balthasar one of the benefits of theatre (he meant this to be applied only to the stage, but I believe much of this can be applied to film as well) is that it makes the drama of existence explicit so that it can be observed. It objectifies and makes visible the tensions that exist in our experiences so that we can view them from the outside, yet at the same time still sense them subjectively. It’s as we travel through these tensions as a story unfolds that we reach the “truth” of and at the conclusion of the story. There’s a sense in which this “traveling” through the story, assuming the audience’s suspension of disbelief, creates a space for a type of revelation to occur. Theologian Aidan Nichols suggests this theatrical or filmic journey allows us, “the enjoyment of the projection of what we already tacitly know about human living, on the one hand, and, on the other, an excited anticipation of something further to be discovered, a possible solution to life’s enigma, which the play will implicitly disclose.” In short the theatre (and film) incarnate truth so that it can be encountered in a living, dynamic manner unavailable to other forms and expressions. All of this of course is endowed with a greater weightiness in light of Christ’s incarnation, or put theatrically, after the Son’s appearance as he shared the stage with humanity.

I want to quickly note three outcomes of the Son’s appearance on our stage (all borrowed from Balthasar), lay it over this brief discussion of dramatic theory and touch a few of their effects in relation to our interaction with the arts and pop culture texts. First, the Son’s appearance on our stage opens a dramatic dialogue between humanity and God. God makes Godself intimately relatable to us through the Son’s appearance. God does this not only to open up this possibility of dialogue, but it seems in expectation of it. The Son is set on the stage of human history in the expectation that this divine provocation would result in humanity taking up their end of the divine/human discourse. The second outcome follows the first in that humanity is expected to partake in the drama of redemption. Humanity is on the stage with the Son. We are not spectators but participants with our parts to play. In particular every Christian is gifted a divine role in the story, which we learn and grow into. The third outcome then is that the Christian’s part of the story opens the door to conflict with a world which prefers the status quo. The Christian’s participation in the sacrificial love which has brought about and is bringing about the world’s redemption inherently subverts the world’s structures of power, thus amplifying the existing tension and conflict.

So what does all of this mean then for our creation and consumption of the arts and pop culture texts? I want to first note that the stage and the screen to an extent imitate the incarnation. They embody story in a manner similar to the way the Son embodied the divine story, and so any truth they reveal is an embodied narrative truth. Drama is one of the languages God chose to use when communicating with us (one could make the case it’s the primary language), and so should be respected even when employed by non-divine hands. If we assume the arts, particularly here drama and film, reveal a kind of human impulse to imitate, consider and respond to the greater divine drama that is ongoing all around us, reflecting them as a mirror, or microcosmically reframing the divine story through the eyes of the playwright or screen writer, then we are witnessing the human divine dialogue in progress. Note that the writer doesn’t need to intentionally set out to accomplish this. The divine drama is ongoing whether or not humanity perceives it. Any story we tell participates in some way in that story. So when we partake in a drama or film we are witnessing at least the human part of the divine dialogue, though often we are graced to witness the divine part of that dialogue in humanity’s stories as well.

I will leave this here for now and address what all of this put together means for those choosing to follow Christ and interact with our culture and the arts it produces while still only considering what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and admirable in the last part of what has turned into a very long blog…

Whatever is Lovely Part III - Dr. Strangetruth: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Limits

2011-06-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

Dr. Strangtruth: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Limits

The second doctrinal lens that I believe will be helpful in interpreting Paul’s Philippian encouragement is that of the “extra-propositional” nature of truth. Paul’s list after all begins with “whatever is true.” I believe truth here doesn’t hold any primacy over the other virtues in his list; however the other virtues aren’t virtues if they aren’t true; that is if they don’t accurately correspond to the physical/spiritual reality in which they’re rooted. This lens is important because in my experience, and this is entirely anecdotal, if there is an erring, it’s often an erring in the direction of confining the idea of truth to the propositional which results in a definition of the virtues listed by Paul which is limited to the denotative and closed to the connotative, particularly when discussing purity and loveliness. As a result when considering purity and loveliness their definitions are often idealized and abstracted instead of incarnated (which as I proposed previously is essential to understanding the Old and New Testaments). Thus loveliness is regularly reduced to prettiness, and purity is commonly reduced and limited to the sphere of sexuality. Of these two, the concept of purity presents the more significant roadblock to understanding the passage, not that the potential for ugliness in beauty isn’t a topic in need of tackling, but I’ve tackled it briefly previously in other blogs, and may come back to it later, so let’s take a look at the concept of purity and how it plays here.

Now I am in no way a Greek or Hebrew scholar, but I’m going to attempt to play an armchair scholar in my blog for the sake of fleshing this out. If you are an authority in Greek or Hebrew, I welcome any input or correction you have to offer. The Greek word Paul uses here in Philippians which we translate “pure” is hagnos. According to Strong’s Concordance it carries several denotative valences. It’s rooted in the ancient Greek word hagios, which we translate as holiness, the concept of being set apart, I would suggest for a purpose. The reason I suggest this is because something that is holy or sacred isn’t set apart for the sake of being separate, but is set apart for a reason or to accomplish some function. Hagnos then plays off this concept of holiness and encompasses the idea of being free from ceremonial defilement and set apart, thus in a condition and prepared for Hebrew Temple worship, all concepts rooted in the Hebrew law of the Old Testament which would require ceremonial cleansing before people could participate in Temple rituals including worship, offerings and animal sacrifices. The idea here is of a freedom from contamination. Envision the feeling of stepping out of the shower after hours of yard work in August (in the Northern Hemisphere anyway). All the sweat and dirt and grass have been washed away, and you feel clean and refreshed. This is how the Hebrews were instructed to enter worship, metaphorically. The ceremonies and rituals were a recognition of God’s work in the cleansing, and were done ideally in recognition that these practices were momentary expressions of the worshiper’s on-going set apart-ness for God’s purposes in their heart and daily actions. This idea of being undefiled by the grime of sin then was conveyed into the area of sexuality at some point so that hagnos also came to take on the concept of chastity and virginality. The connection is easy enough to see. Someone who sets themselves apart for the purpose of their vows to their spouse will remain committed, unadultered and sexually faithful to that spouse, and thus be uncontaminated by the act of adultery.

The purity that Paul speaks of here then, I would suggest isn’t primarily sexual spotlessness but incorporates this idea of something being set aside to accomplish God’s purposes. In that case you could read the translation “Whatever is pure” as, “Whatever is set apart to accomplish God’s purposes” as well. Now you may ask, “What does this rabbit trail have to do with the nature of truth?” I’m glad you asked. If we approach the propositional concept of purity strictly through the denotative door of sexual spotlessness or sinlessness, we miss the rich philological connotations encased in hagnos, and thus limit our understanding of Paul’s encouragement to simply sexual morality when the net of truth thrown by Paul covers a far wider area. Truth then isn’t the proposition itself, but is the reality the proposition is trying to articulate, and thus truth is “extra-propositional”. If we perceive articulation’s limitation we often also perceive it as something regrettable, because this means the articulation of truth is curbed by the ambiguities of language. Thankfully, because the fullness of truth is far greater than can be articulated through language, the truth isn’t limited by our limitations, only its communication and understanding through propositional language is limited. So how does this relate then to the arena of the arts and pop culture?

This notion of the “extra-propositional” nature of truth relates to the arts in many ways, but this is turning into a novel, so I’ll only write of one, which is this: The notion that any proposition is the truth is not true, and thus is not among the thoughts we should be thinking of or meditating on. I acknowledge this is sounding very anti-propositional, but I want to suggest it’s not. If you’ve noticed I am using propositions to try to attempt to make my case for the weakness of propositions. Propositions are necessary in trying to articulate truth; however my point is that they are not the truth themselves. They participate in the truth, they do not embody or encapsulate it. Even when the Bible speaks propositionally it points to a truth larger than author’s language can contain. Thus, the trump card of a strictly denotative understanding of truth, which by its nature limits the arts with their tendency to tread the waters of connotation, should not be taken at face value.

Whatever is Lovely Part II - Skin, Bones, and Vision

2011-06-09T11:18:00.000-07:00

Skin, Bones and Vision
The first doctrinal lens that I believe would be helpful in placing Paul’s admonition toward truth, purity and loveliness into focus is the lens of the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity. More specifically I would suggest the Father’s sending of the Son in the flesh into the world reveals something very insightful and useful in helping us understand Paul. In fact I believe it’s absolutely essential that Paul’s writing (and the rest of the New Testament; even all of scripture) be viewed in the context of the Incarnation given the centrality of that narrative to both Christian doctrine and identity. With that in mind let’s take another look at this passage.

First we’ll have to construct our lens; then we can look through it to see what it reveals. We’ll begin with the incarnation and what it reveals about the Father. Through it we see that the Son’s obedience to the Father’s sending reveals the extent of the Father’s regard for humanity. The Father has such high regard for humanity that the Father sends the Son to communicate that esteem and affection to them through the Son’s presence, words and actions. Of course humanity’s value isn’t self created, and we’ve done nothing to earn the Father’s respect. In fact, the reality is quite the contrary. Humanity has repeatedly and almost constantly driven their collective thumbs into the eye of their creator; but despite all of our collective efforts to carve out some real autonomy, establish some independent identity and reconstruct the gifted divine image apart from our creator, we have not diminished the value of the divine image given to us by our creator. Humanity may have wrecked, dented, cracked, and stained that image, but nothing we’ve done has moderated the value of that image. When the Father looks at humanity the Father sees the inherent nobility, and loveliness that was gifted at creation. Granted the Father is not blind to the damage and ugliness produced by our rebelliousness and sin. In fact it’s so at the fore of the Father’s thought that all of history is bent around its remedy. The Father in looking at a damaged humanity trying to make their lives in a world damaged physically, socially and spiritually by their actions sees beings valuable enough to sacrifice the Son as a remedy to their plight. The Father then sees both the inherent beauty and earned ugliness of humanity simultaneously. This apparent divine both/and view of humanity then is a lens we can use to help in understanding this passage.

Let’s carry this idea of bi-focal vision over then to the arts, and the pieces that Christians create and consume. God’s vision allows God to see humanity’s value in the midst of their sinful ugliness and created beauty concurrently. This of course means that there is loveliness and nobility inherently bound in humanity which can be seen. I would suggest that when humans create, bits of both their loveliness and their ugliness make their way into their creations. Picture a tube of Aqua-Fresh toothpaste. Three separate colors squeeze out of the tube in proportion to the colors that are in the tube. It’s a very crude analogy, but I believe something similar happens when a person creates. Both a person’s ugliness and loveliness are in play and find their ways into what they create. This means that in any person’s creation there is truth, nobility and loveliness to be found, if one has the vision to see it. So then Glee, Lady Gaga and Stieg Larsson may embody much which may be objectionable and ugly from a Christian perspective, but because of the image of God bound up in all involved in the creation of TV shows, and music and novels, there is truth, nobility and loveliness to be found there as well; and according to Paul we should think about such things when we find them. This is not an argument that a Christian has no constraints in the creation and consumption of art and pop culture texts, but it is an argument that the effective loveliness of any given piece is going to be dependent on the individual’s ability to find the inherent truth and loveliness in the piece being consumed. It’s there to be found. The question is whether we see it.

Paul’s urgings through this lens can be seen as an urging to seek and find what is true, right, pure, lovely, and admirable even in the midst of what is false, wrong, impure, ugly and condemnable. This is how the Father sees; bi-focally, creatively and generously. This then leads us to our second doctrinal lens which will help us understand this verse... to be revealed in Part III

Whatever is Lovely - An Introduction

2011-06-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things – Philippians 4.8 (NIV)

This passage out of Paul’s letter to believers in Philippi is a trump card, or at least it’s used as one from time to time. It’s often the spade laid on the card table of the arts to reign in the creation and consumption of artistic endeavors and pop culture texts which are not regarded as thoroughly and overtly beautiful, noble and pure. Paul’s text is often seen as proof positive that no professing Christian should be watching Glee, or listening to Lady Gaga, or reading Stieg Larsson novels. They are not true, right, or pure, and because they’re not, they’re not lovely, admirable or praiseworthy either. The suggestion that often follows is that the consumption and creation of these songs, shows and novels be replaced with ones that are lovely, admirable and praiseworthy because they were produced and created from a clearly communicated Christian perspective. If all truth flows from God and God is at the heart that all that is true, then Christians who believe in that truth should clearly and obviously bear that out in all they create and consume, the belief follows. Now that I’ve built the straw man, I suppose I now must do a little dismantling, and suggest another possible way of understanding Paul’s text. (In all honesty I hope this isn’t too much of a straw man, and I welcome help and suggestions in providing a more accurate, though brief description of this take on this text.)

I would suggest a principle, or perhaps more accurately a theory, needs to be applied here which I’m coming to believe is Biblical, but not overtly stated in one text or verse: the principle/theory that the shortest most efficient line between two points is typically or perhaps often the least godly/Biblical route to take (I’m still working this one out). So applied in this instance it would mean that just because a piece of art or a pop culture text overtly declares scriptural truths, it doesn’t mean that art or text is in reality an accurate representation of the truth. This would also mean that just because on first blush a piece of art of pop culture text doesn’t seem to be true, noble or pure doesn’t mean it is not lovely, admirable or praiseworthy. I’ll approach this from three different perspectives in 3 following blogs to try to flesh this out a bit. I think I’d prefer to write this one in parts as opposed to writing one long “super blog”. Part 2 to follow soon… stay tuned.

Tell Me a Story

2011-05-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. – Hannah Arendt

I’ve come to love the often long, arduous narrative portions of the Bible, particularly those in the Old Testament. I love indulging in the imagination necessary to create that “movie in my head.” I blame this squarely on Tolkien. For some reason The Lord of the Rings trilogy fostered a respect and enjoyment of a lived in, deeply historical, acutely human, epic narrative. The first time I finished The Return of the King I found myself wanting to experience that disquieting epic urgency present in his story; that feeling of kairos, and inter-connectedness; the experience of the veil of divine meaning momentarily lifted so one might get a passing glimpse or scent or breezy touch of the divine mystery; the hint of holistic reality, the trace of divine condescension. For some reason, I found this experience often repeated when reading the epic tales recorded in the Old Testament.

This wasn’t always the case for me. I grew up with a strong preference for the enlightening pedagogy found in the Apostle’s letters. Meaning was much easier to find there. The writers came right out and told you what they meant. They explained those epic tales. They told you what was going on behind the scenes in heavenly places while folks slogged about trying to make sense of their lives down here. They gave you the moral of the story. They clarified the ambiguities of history... to a point, but as it turns out, not always to a particularly sharp point. This stood out to me as a Bible study I am involved in was trying to make sense of Romans 9 through 11.

Paul here is trying to reconcile God’s actions in the history of the life of Israel with God’s actions in the young history of the life of the Church. It may seem at first blush that God has abandoned Israel to engage the Church. Paul makes the historical case that this isn’t so. This is Paul doing his best to clear the muddy waters of history. Of course this clearing is necessary because history doesn’t interpret itself. Even when God acts to intervene in history, or perhaps especially when God acts to intervene in history, God’s motivations and intentions are often not entirely clear. Take as an example any narrative representation in scripture. When God extended daylight in the book of Joshua, what did God intend to communicate to humanity? When God allowed Job to suffer, what was really going on there? When God allows Jonah’s shade to be eaten by worms, what are we to take from that? Granted, we’re often given partial answers to these questions, but we are typically left with more questions than answers. Some might be uncomfortable with this predicament, which is why we may tend to embrace only the explanations in the New Testament, however I would suggest this ambiguity is one of the strengths of Biblical historical narratives. In the words of philosopher Hanna Arendt these narrative reveal meaning, I might add “experientially,” without defining it.

One of the most amazing outcomes of a good story, at least to me, is the wordless glimpse it provides into transcendence, into places where denotations and definitions are powerless to go. A good story allows one to experience something beyond the walls of the visible, and allows the unseen to be perceived, imagined and experienced. These experiences though are, again at least for me, often difficult to impossible to articulate. Words as human creations are often not capable of containing the descriptions or meaning of these kinds of experiences. The meaning simply overflows the words. This is part of the challenge I think Paul faces in Romans 9 through 11. He’s trying to condense a story God had been telling over thousands of years into a few paragraphs. He brings to light the key points he wants to highlight to boil the story down for his readers, but there is far more that God was and is doing in those relationships than can be contained in those few chapters, which I believe Paul himself would acknowledge.

This then I believe is part of the value of reading the narratives of the Old Testament on their own; that the reader gets to experience these glimpses first hand. They get to experience the wildness of a God who is good but not safe, to cite Lewis. They get to experience the meaning the Holy Spirit is intending to reveal to humanity, even while that meaning isn’t entirely defined, and in this case, I believe that lack of definition is a good thing.

Moses, Jesus and Superman

2011-05-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve always felt that the origin of Superman is the story of Moses – the child sent on a ship to fulfill a destiny. And this [the 2006 film Superman Returns] was a story about Christ – it’s all about sacrifice: “The world, I hear their cries.” So what happens? He gets the knife in the side and later he falls to the earth in the shape of a crucifix. It was kind of nailing you on the head, but I enjoyed that, because I’ve always found the myth of Christ compelling and moving. – Bryan Singer

Many Christians who have an interest in the arts often look for God’s presence, or for at least some spiritual consciousness in film, music, television, and other pop culture texts. Given the vocabulary of the Bible and the church are still routinely drawn upon in our overarching cultural conversations, as artists, writers and filmmakers continue to draw on its narratives and images, it stands to reason that bits and pieces of those ideas would surface here and there floating around is in the cultural miasma. Furthermore, from the perspective of those who look to the Bible as a source of truth and an anchor for faith, those who create do so with the materials provided them by God, creating in the environment of a divinely created reality. So all that being said, I’m not surprised to see Christian images and narratives in films, even big budget Hollywood superhero movies. What I was both surprised by and pleased to see was one of those film’s directors discussing the manner in which he consciously and intentionally integrated those spiritual themes in his film. I’d like to make a few quick and dirty points that stick out in my mind after thinking about Mr. Singer’s comments.

First, there is a transcendent or spiritual component to storytelling. Given every writer or storyteller, whether they acknowledge it or not (even you Jean-Paul Sarte) is working within the created reality, which consists of both seen and unseen components, every story told, even those that only deal with physical reality, is still written in that physical/spiritual reality. As poet Gerard Manly Hopkins writes, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Because the writer writes in the physical world and that world is charged with and points toward its creator, story will tend toward that as well. Of course I’m not suggesting Bryan Singer is approaching his storytelling from this perspective, but his intellectual and emotional interest in the myth of Christ speaks a bit to an awareness of the operation of some transcendence in story.

Second, some storytellers and stories are more successful at making visible the mystery of the unseen component of reality. According to novelist Flannery O’Connor a good story should show more than it tells. For example, in film if a voice over is employed to explain the action that has just occurred, the director may not have done a sufficient job “showing” the audience what he or she is now trying to communicate through telling them. The result when this occurs is a story that ends up feeling like a fable with a moral or a Sunday School lesson (see the end of Sam Raimi’s Spider Man 3). The best stories allow the reader or viewer to encounter the mystery behind the story, making it visible experientially, even if only briefly. The fact that Singer intended to “nail” his audience on the head with the myth of Christ tends to push him toward the didactic end of that spectrum, though the purpose here isn’t to make judgment on how successful he was in making visible that mystery.

Third, even if Christian narrative and symbology are employed in a utilitarian manner they may still succeed at making visible the mystery of the unseen. As far as I know, and I did a bit of reading on Bryan Singer (thank you Wikipedia), I don’t believe Mr. Singer identifies himself as a Christian in any way. Now, some Christians might recoil and the idea of the Christ-myth employed as a means to tell a super hero story in the hands of someone who has no recognizably orthodox faith in Christ. Some others might wince at the idea of “impurely” mining the Christ story as a cynical means for large movie studios to make huge profits. And there are good reasons to be cautious on both and many other fronts; however I would suggest that neither the faith, or lack thereof, of any of those involved in the production of a film, nor any less than pure intentions or motivations for a film’s production create any hindrance to the possibility of the audience’s encounter of the mystery of the unseen which exists simultaneously beneath both the surface of the film and the surface of reality. Any story or film in the hands of the Holy Spirit can pull back the veil on the unseen (which probably needs to be its own blog subject at some point). In other words the Holy Spirit is at work to make known the love of God the Father revealed through the Son’s death and resurrection using means that escape our detection and imagination. The Spirit is about this work everywhere, even as stories and films are written, produced and consumed.

Like I said, quick and dirty. I have to say, I’d love for more film makers to discuss the spiritual side of their film making process. Kudos to Bryan Singer for bringing it up

Wasted Beauty

2011-04-21T10:58:00.001-07:00

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. – Mark 14.3-6 (NIV)

I would venture to suggest that most folks who have been involved in an artistic endeavor have wrestled with the notion that the resources used to create could have been better employed for a more practical purpose. It is a very sensible and human instinct. Resources are finite and must be managed and rationed. And there are those without physical resources who would find the money that paid for that paint or that guitar or that camera a great help in paying for their food, clothing and shelter. This is the case made by those present at the meal in this scene in the Gospel of Mark. There are more practical uses for this expensive perfume. Did she have to use all of it? Wouldn’t half of it have made the point? Use half, sell half. Better yet, use one quarter, sell three quarters. They believed the perfume applied in this way was wasted. But Jesus pushes back at their contention asserting that they have witnessed something beautiful, and yet have not recognized it as such. I think we miss much that is beautiful today for the same reason I believe Jesus’ fellow diners missed it then. We fail to understand that beauty is wasteful, and thus fail to appreciate the wastefulness of beauty.

Jesus later in the same story states that this woman, “…poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial.” (NIV) This dinner scene takes place just days before Jesus will be crucified, during Holy Week. There is a sense in which the lavish, profligate use of this perfume gives a picture of what Jesus will do for humanity a few days later. Von Balthasar sees this Divine gift of the Divine self to humanity as a “squandering”, recognizing the recklessness with which the Father gives Himself away, resulting in the “divine recklessness of the Son, who allows himself to be squandered.”
This notion of squandering can be seen as extravagant, decadent, and magnanimously generous. It’s the Father giving Himself to the world through the obedience of the Son. Charles Colson coined what I think is a great phrase to describe this, “hilarious generosity.” This is a ludicrous gift, in that it is an over abundance of generosity, but what else has God to give to humanity than Godself? Everything else has been created by God and has already been given to humanity.

Humanity’s response to this gift however can tend to be skeptical and cautious at best, and is often openly hostile. It’s because of this response that this Divine recklessness and self squandering can also be seen as wasteful, misspent, frivolous and perhaps often fruitless. God knew this generosity would be abused and misused, as was every kindness God’s ever shown to humanity, and yet God chose to “waste” God’s over abundance on some who would never appreciate that abundance nor recognize that anything was actually given. However it is this act of hilarious generosity in the face of this lethargic, cynical and at times antagonistic response to the gift that is the heart of beauty.

This over abundance, this grace, is God’s attractiveness. These generous acts are what reveal what is in God’s heart. The Son’s actions through his life, consummated by Good Friday leave the Father’s heart exposed for the entire world to see, and what is divulged is a heart that will go to inconceivable lengths to reveal a committed, determined, intransigent love. If it were not for the Son who was willing to be squandered and wasted we would not know this. This wastefulness is the heart of God’s grace, and the heart of God’s attractiveness, thus is the core of God’s beauty. All Christian endeavors, be they artistic or more practical, should then remember that a resource’s most practical use isn’t always its best use.

The Aesthetics of Glory

2011-04-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. -Romans 8.17

I like the idea that glory is an inherently aesthetic word; that is glory is something that can be seen with our naked eyes. It’s often referred to in terms of “streams of light”, or “beauty” or “brightness”, which are all visual terms; light, beauty and brightness all being consumed through the eyes. I’m not sure we generally tend to link the beauty and attractiveness of glory with the experience of suffering. Paul does, and not just here in Romans. In this instance he directly links the beauty and brightness of glory with the suffering of the cross, hitting at the heart of a truth that at first may seem counter-intuitive to us.

I want to walk down the trail of one of the ways I understand their connection and see if this relationship might make more sense. At the heart of the event of the cross is the absolute articulation of the Father’s deep love for the world expressed through the Son’s self-gifting obedience to the Father. The Son gives himself to the Father who directs the Son to give himself completely to rebellious, proud, obstinate, and darkened humanity so as to experience in his body the violence inherent in the broken relationship between humanity and the Divine. In this act of obedience the Son experiences the brutality of humanity’s sin, but also mysteriously experiences as a human himself the separation from the Divine caused by sin as the Father allows this self-gifting act to operate as an act of atonement. This amazing drama of love and grace played out on the world stage for all humanity to see, for those of us who are Christians, serves to attract us to God. It’s this act that reveals most completely the extent of the Father’s love for the fallen world and the lengths to which the Father will go to bring humanity home into the strong embrace of His love. With the cross the Father declares to the world, “Don’t you ever doubt that I love you.”

This love revealed through the cross is what attracts me to God. It’s what I find beautiful. When I “see” the Son suffering on the cross, I’m seeing the glory, beauty, brightness of God. Michael Pritzl of The Violet Burning in his song “The Face of Beauty” articulates it well when he sings, “I’ve seen the face of beauty/His head is crowned with thorns/His face is ripped and torn/I’ve seen the King in all his strength”

So if God’s glory is linked to Christ’s suffering, what does that have to do with those of us who have staked our lives on what we believe to be the absolute importance of this event? In this simple sentence of Paul’s he suggests it has everything to do with us and the manner in which we make our choices, so as to also, through our lives, reveal the beauty, brightness and glory of God. If, as I believe, God’s glory is most clearly revealed through God’s self-gifting love, then when we are able to love our spouse, children, neighbors, co-workers, strangers, enemies, and fellow church goers with something like the self-gifting love the Father gives us, even when, and perhaps especially when that love involves suffering, distress or pain, we reveal a little of the beauty, brightness, and light of God. When we love in this way we shine God’s glory, thus helping people to see the beauty of God. In the end beauty must be seen to be appreciated. The Son is at the right hand of the Father. It is now the Holy Spirit working in and through us as we love those around us which makes this beauty/glory visible.

Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace

2010-06-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

I recently finished reading Shusaku Endo’s historical novel Silence, and have found myself periodically haunted by it over the past several months as it continues to expand in my imagination. The story brings to the fore much of what interests me, and what I’d like to explore in this blog. Endo explores the manner in which culture acts as a sieve through which we sift our understanding of Jesus and the Divine. He explores pride and its insidious presence, even in acts of love, service and humility. He explores the relation of suffering to faith and their relation to a God who remains silent in the presence of both. It’s this last theme that interests me most, this relation of God’s silence with God’s presence/absence, especially in light of the Balthasar sermon for which this blog is named. This also is the central question Endo wrestles with in his novel, hence its title.

Through the book Endo is dramatically rendering the Christian gospel through and for Japanese eyes and ears, sifting the Western presentation and understanding of Christianity through the customs and workings of both Japanese culture at large and Japanese Christians. As a means to this end Endo’s central character, through whose eyes and letters the story is largely told, is a Portuguese Jesuit missionary priest, Rodrigues, who sees his mission as one of correctly ministering the sacraments of the Church to the existing and hidden Japanese Christians (Christianity and all missionary activity have been made illegal), and evangelizing those who were not part of the church, with a certain triumphant expectation at the core of both. Also on his agenda is locating his Jesuit missionary mentor who is rumored to have apostatized, that is turned his back on his faith.

Almost immediately upon arriving in Japan two of those to whom Rodriques has been ministering are put to death for their faith, tied to a stake in the ocean’s tide and killed by hypothermia over the course of several days, a slow agonizing death to be sure. He holds them in high esteem because they were willing to die for their faith, yet he seems to struggle with his own responsibility in the matter, given they were only discovered after he had arrived. This struggle grows as he is captured, along with other Christians to whom he ministered. He sees many of them tortured and killed while in confinement and tries to continue to minister to them, striving to remain a strong example of faith for them. This however continues to be a greater and greater struggle. He is finally confronted by his mentor who is alive and has in fact apostatized, and is serving the Japanese government in their attempts to counter Christianity. In the end he must choose whether to apostatize himself, however not in order to save his own life, but the lives of many other Christians who were being slowly tortured and killed in “The Pit”, an execution device where a person was hung upside down in a pit and a small incision made in their ear so that they slowly bled to death over the course of days, giving them time to recant their faith and save themselves. Thus at the novel’s climax you see the apparent trajectory of the entire story is one of Rodrigues moving closer and closer to apostatizing himself, with this tension of course felt by the reader, torn between Rodrigues’ commitment to his faith, and his love for his fellow Christians.

Throughout the novel there runs a parallel thread to Rodrigues’ narrative. Though told entirely from Rodrigues’ perspective, the character Kichijiro is meant to serve early on as a picture of everything that Rodrigues is not: weak, fearful, proud, and often emotionally unhinged. In the story Kichijiro apostatizes as often as the opportunity arises, often citing his weakness as a reason, and wondering why God had made him this way. It must be noted that Kichijiro is also the one who betrays Rodrigues to the authorities, raising obvious comparisons to Judas in the gospels, a point not lost on Rodrigues’ sense of righteousness. Kichijiro however recognized that his faith was not as “strong” as the other Christians who were willing to part with their lives for the faith; however he consistently returns to the faith, asking Rodrigues for confession and sacraments even after his repeated apostasy and betrayal in the novel. Over the course of the story as Rodrigues follows a trajectory toward apostasy, it becomes apparent that perhaps he is more like Kichijiro than he’d like to admit.

The obvious question to ask as one reads the novel, assuming one was a person of faith, would be whether he or she would end up apostatizing in a similar circumstance. The less obvious question, and the one ultimately posed by the novel is whether one SHOULD apostatize. The first question of course assumes one shouldn’t, but this assumption isn’t necessarily shared by Endo as the story reaches its climax. For the most part in the story the Christians are asked to simply step on a “Fumie” in order to show they are not Christians. A “Fumie” is simply a rendering in bronze or wood of Jesus, possibly on the cross, or possibly of Jesus and Mary. If the person steps on the Fumie they’re released, if not they move closer to torture and death. The novel begs the question of whether this simple act undermines or reveals faith. Simply put, is it more loving to apostatize so as to alleviate suffering or to steadfastly embody the faith that one teaches so as to be faithful and consistent? Endo’s answer to that question reveals the difference between the existential needs of Japanese and Western Christians, at least as he perceived them.

Endo believed that either could be valid expressions of faith. Rodrigues’ mentor, as he is urging him to step on the fumie and release his fellow Christians from their pain and suffering calls it “the most painful act of love you have ever performed.” Rodrigues even sees a vision of Christ, whose face has been very important to Rodrigues throughout the entire novel, asking him to trample on him, declaring that it was for this reason that he entered the world. I will not reveal here Rodrigues’ decision. You’ll have to read the novel yourself. It will suffice to say that his decision of course shapes the course of the rest of his life.

Without revealing the climax of the plot, I will say that Endo throughout the story, through various characters, but particularly through Rodrigues, asks why God is silent in the face of such suffering, even going so far as to ask whether God is even present at all. Why does God not intervene in the interest of justice or mercy? Why does God not make God’s presence known in the interest of comfort? Endo eventually concludes that God’s presence is revealed through the Christ imitating weakness of Christ followers. Endo sees in the story’s climax a vision of Christ not, “filled with majesty,” or “made beautiful by endurance of pain,” or “filled with the strength of a will that has resisted temptation,” but an image of a face, “sunken and utterly exhausted.” He concludes later in the book that even if God were silent that these weak, flawed, stunted, and failed expressions of faith would have spoken of God. These expressions of faith to Endo are participations in the humanity of his savior, and the dramatic re-rendering on the world stage of both the divine love which Christ rendered while human, and the human dependence on that love as we impiously, impatiently and imperfectly render that love to one another, which contrary to prevailing conventional wisdom and intuition, is really a magnificent encouragement.

Into the Fray

2010-01-07T06:01:00.000-08:00

Denver based group The Fray’s song “You Found Me” has recently been splashed across the pop culture grid, finding plentiful airtime on pop and rock radio stations, and used to promote television shows on the ABC network such as Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy. Of interest is the song’s popularity given its overtly theological disposition. The song opens with its narrator finding God, “on the corner of 1^st and Amistad”, the translation of which from Spanish incidentally conveys the notion of friendship, “smoking his last cigarette” and asks God where God has been. The narrator describes an experience of suffering he has been through and then accuses God of never leaving any messages or sending any letters, though in the end he acknowledges being found, though still asking why God had taken so long. The song at its heart is attempting to work emotionally and experientially through the theological category of theodicy. Some, especially those hearing the song from the perspective of their own faith, may hear a song of accusation denouncing the love or goodness of God. However, another possible theological perspective sees the song as akin to many of the Psalms, a lament born of faith, complaining to God in faith and waiting expectantly for an answer. The song then could be seen as a contemporary expression of lament, expressing the same existential, though faith rooted angst voiced by many of the psalmists in the scriptures.

Isaac Slade, The Fray’s frontman and lyricist affirms this assertion that this song is born of a faith attempting to reconcile a trust in the unseen with his own lived experience, which on the surface appear at odds with one another, saying, “It demands so much of my faith to keep believing, keep hoping in the unseen. Sometimes the tunnel has a light at the end, but usually they just look black as night. This song is about that feeling, and the hope that I still have, buried deep in my chest.” To some this faith may be difficult to discern, and may even appear absent because of the confrontational manner in which it is expressed. However to Slade this confrontational tone is the intended representation of his faith. In a different interview he asserts, “"I kept getting these phone calls from home - tragedy after tragedy... If there is some kind of person in charge of this planet - are they sleeping? Smoking? Where are they? I just imagined running into God standing on a street corner like Bruce Springsteen, smoking a cigarette, and I'd have it out with him.” This is of course exactly the picture conveyed in the song, a person of faith having it out with God, and perhaps leaving the narrative, and thus the listener without resolution as the song fades. As troubling as this may seem, especially in light of what Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the “dominant American cultural ideology of success, continuity, and the avoidance of anything messy…”, this is not a unique expression of faith within the history Christianity and Judaism. These same types of expressions can be found in the Psalms.

Denise Dombroski Hopkins calls the Psalms that mirror this type of simultaneous expression of distress and faith, laments, picturing them as “complaining in faith.” She suggests that most laments share a similar structure, beginning with an often short, emotionally charged address to God often punctuated by questions such as “Why?” or “How long?”. They tend to move to the complaint itself as the psalmist describes their suffering and their enemies, and often accuses God of not caring about their circumstances. These expressions seem to often be married to petitions that follow their complaints, their motivations for making the complaint, and at times end with a confession of trust, or a vow of praise; however these concluding expressions of resolution are not universal to all psalm laments.

Hopkins’ psalm lament structure can be readily seen in what can be described as The Fray’s contemporary lament as Slade finds God on the street and asks God where God had been, and eventually “Why’d you have to wait?” In the subsequent verses Slade lays out his sufferings, revolving largely around, “losing her, the only one who's ever known/ Who I am, who I'm not and who I wanna to be” In the bridge Slade finally lays out his accusation, mainly that God has been absent for years, and that God never communicated with him in that time, concluding, “You got some kind of nerve taking all I want.” The song then ends not with a justification or a refutation of these accusations but simply with a resigned acknowledgement of being found, which in reality seems to be all Slade had wanted to begin with. It must be granted here that the song does not precisely parallel the psalm lament format given the repeating chorus, a standard cultural convention of a typical pop-rock song. Additionally Slade never finds his way to actually making a petition, explaining his motivation, for example his innocence, though one may see that as implied, or praising God. One may be able to see glimmers of a confession of trust in his resigned acknowledgement of being found, but that acknowledgement is left with so much ambiguity that the state of Slade’s trust at the end of the song can be seen as up for debate. However given, according to Hopkins, that it is the first two portions, the address and the complaint that are common to all laments, and that the other portions show themselves to various degrees, this can truly be seen as a contemporary expression of a Hebrew lament. Perhaps this will reveal itself even more clearly through a comparison with a specific psalm lament.

A psalm which seems to closely parallel Slade’s expression of faith in crisis is Psalm 88. Like Slade the psalmist cries out to God from “the depths of the pit” and only receives silence in return. The psalm ends with the same lack of resolution with the psalmist writing, “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness.” In the end Slade seems to be expressing struggles very similar to those expressed by the psalmist, in an uncannily similar voice. In this light perhaps this isn’t a contemporary expression of a Hebrew lament after all, but a lament common to the experience of faith in The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Peter, John and Paul expressed in a contemporary form.

Remembrance, Nostalgia, and Reinterpretation

2009-07-31T11:26:00.000-07:00

I recently heard a good sermon on John’s little postcard of a letter to the church of Ephesus in the book of Revelation. Among the main points of emphasis was the call to remembrance, tied to John’s recording of Jesus’ assertion that the Ephesian church had forsaken their first love, his plea that they remember the heights from which they had fallen, and his own call that they repent and return to an earlier set of practices or behaviors. After reflecting on the passage and the sermon I was struck by the dangerous road Jesus was calling the church in Ephesus, and by extension those of us who follow after them, to travel: the road of remembrance. The passage down this road is definitely necessary for those who would attempt to pursue God. Throughout the Bible you see God calling those who would follow to remember what God had done previously as a means of building their faith. You see God claiming the history of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the deliverance from Egypt, and the maintenance of grass and sparrows as personal works that we should be drawing on as a means of knowing about and relating to the self-gifting God who is revealed through those acts. The call to the church of Ephesus to remember however seems a bit more personal, which is where the danger lies.

They’re not being asked to directly remember God, but to remember their expressions and experiences of their faith in God, which seems to be a variation on this theme of remembrance. To put it another way, they’re not being asked to remember the works of God, but the manner in which they expressed their faith in those works, and what that felt like. Some may see a danger here in the distance between experiential or “subjective” remembrance and historical or “objective” remembrance. While the nature of that danger, and even whether it’s a danger at all, would be an interesting discussion, I see a different danger here, the tension between remembrance and nostalgia. Often when I hear this passage referenced in messages or songs or in conversation the call to return to “the things you did at first” becomes a longing for an idyllic earlier time in a person’s life, or in our collective history. Attached is the notion that if we could only return there in some way then we would be able to re-embrace our first love. I would suggest this is dangerous to our faith in several ways.

First, nostalgia tends to put God in the box replication; that is it assumes that God must do now in our time and context what God did in a previous time and context in the exact same manner God did it in the past. Because it idealizes the past, nostalgia tends to view what occurred there as the norm. Thus any thing which deviates from the normative past in our present context is judged to be wanting. If this were the nature of reality, it would be a great blow to the freedom of God. I would suggest that just because God is “the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow” doesn’t mean the manner in which God chooses to interact with the world is limited to how it’s been done in the past. To see evidence of this one only need look at the difference between the manner in which God interacted with Moses, and the manner in which God interacted with John himself.

Second, nostalgia tends to prioritize our experience of God ahead of our interactive relationship with God. In short, it prizes the sentimental above the unflinching messiness of reality. When we attempt to return to an idyllic past, what we often really want to return to is an experience of closeness with God which often accompanies new faith. We in essence want to re-experience the exhilaration or joy or whatever emotional state marked our conversion because it is to us evidence of God’s existence and embracing of us. Jeremy Begbie writes of this sentimentalist phenomenon that, “The sentimentalist loves and hates, grieves or pities not for the sake of the other but for the sake of enjoying love, hate, grief or pity.” Here nostalgia has a greater interest in a “Deep Warm Sweet Interior Glowing” than in any “other”, be that God or neighbor.

Third, nostalgia tends to prize spiritual immaturity. When we place an inordinate amount of esteem on our early expressions of faith we can tend to devalue and under emphasize our present expressions of faith. I would suggest that as faith matures it expresses itself differently. Philip Yancey in his book “Reaching for the Invisible God” suggests that faith is akin to a muscle that must be exercised in order for it to grow. As alluded to previously, conversion, especially in many Protestant and Evangelical circles, is often accompanied by an emotional surge which fades with time. In that surge, where the converted experiences a strong sense of the presence of God, the muscle of faith isn’t severely taxed. It’s when that sense of God’s presence seems distant or absent that faith is tested and exercised. When we prize the idyllic past we in a sense treasure an immature expression of our faith and devalue the new things the Spirit has done in our lives since then, and has in store for us.

So if Jesus is calling us to a sort of existential remembrance here, how do we read this postcard through those eyes, and not through the eyes of nostalgia? If we assume that nostalgia is a force that can be destructive to faith, then we must assume a non-nostalgic stance when interpreting the call to, “Repent and do the things you did at first.” This would mean that Jesus isn’t calling the church in Ephesus to a rote mimicry of their earlier practices, behaviors, and expressions of faith, but to return to a vital, first love-centric, renewed, and vigorous reinterpretation of their love and faith in their present context, remembering he “who holds the seven stars (the messengers of the churches) in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lamp stands (the seven churches mentioned in the Revelation)”, the one who is both the object of their faith and the template of self-gifting actions. I would suggest this is the road of remembrance and subsequently reinterpretation they’re being called on to travel.

Juno, Culture and Theology

2009-05-01T06:20:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I posted, and as I'm graduating in 2 weeks, I'll have more time to post more, finally. In the mean time here is a paper I wrote for my Pop Culture and Christian formation class which fits the themes of this blog, so I figured I'd share it. It is a bit specific to the class, but I think works on its own to, even if its a bit dated. Enjoy.

The 2007 film Juno, directed by Jason Reitman, is an odd mix of genres, tones and emotions. It is a teen film, in that its focus is largely on high school students, yet it lacks the genre’s stereotypical raunch. It is a largely apolitical film that tonally achieves both pro-choice and pro-life moments. It is a comedy which is ultimately poignant and moving, perhaps even overtly and overly sweet, yet its sweetness grows out of the characters and story, and is not simply affixed for expediency. In addition to all of these peculiar juxtapositions the film somehow accomplishes the simultaneous engagement of sociological, ethical, and theological narratives surrounding teen pregnancy. What follows is a brief exploration of bits of those narratives, the manner in which they play out in the film, and how that might correspond to the lives of the adolescents who might engage this text.

Sociologically, and psychologically for that matter, Juno, the film’s protagonist, is a relatively typical high school student, though perhaps with a maturity and vocabulary beyond her years which can be overlooked for the sake of the willing suspension of disbelief. She has formed an identity along the fringes of popular culture, built around quirky, punk and alternative music, and slasher films.[1] Because of these chosen associations she experiences a degree of marginalization, which she in reality wears as a badge of honor, though as a result of her pregnancy she experiences an even further marginalization which she is less comfortable with, referring to herself as “the cautionary whale.”[2] In this tension the film recognizes the difference between the manner in which teens and people in general view themselves, the manner in which others view them, and the manner in which the individual either embraces or rejects other’s interpretations of him or her. Here Juno must grapple with what her pregnancy means to her identity. Does it irrevocably alter it, or can it be assimilated into the construct she’s already built? It’s into this social and psychological cauldron of ambiguity that the ethical and theological narratives are stirred, as Juno attempts to decide how to respond to her situation.

Juno’s first instinct upon learning she’s pregnant is to contact a local clinic, found in the Yellow Pages, which offers feminine reproductive services, asking how she might, “procure a hasty abortion.” She sets an appointment over the phone, but as she approaches the clinic there is a single protester outside, Su-Chin, who happens to be a classmate of Juno’s, with a sign shouting to nobody in particular, “All babies want to get borned.” This is the film’s first moment of inserting a theological and ethical narrative into Juno’s personal social and psychological narrative. As Juno walks past Su-Chin on her way to the clinic she is shouted after about her fetus’ development. She is told the fetus inside her has a beating heart, hair and fingernails. The last fact stops her in her tracks as she seems bemused. Upon entering the clinic she attempts light banter with the “emo” girl behind the counter who seems bored disinterested, addressing Juno in a cold, matter of fact tone. As Juno waits for her name to be called she can’t escape the sound of everyone either scratching, or tapping their fingernails, bringing to mind Su-Chin’s admonition. Juno eventually retreats from the clinic, running. As she sprints past Su-Chin, she shouts to Juno, “God appreciates your miracle!” Su-Chin is addressing Juno from her own theological narrative, which evidently sees a connection between God and some form of respect for life, and seems intended to be symbolic of the Christian pro-life position. Su-Chin’s narrative then disrupts Juno’s plans by disrupting Juno’s narrative.

In this theological confrontation, Juno’s latent theological narrative is never explicitly addressed, however the audience does witness her grappling with how these theological claims interact with the ethical decisions she is being forced to make, and how these correlate to her psychological and social contexts. This grappling however does not occur through the production of an easy moral, or even through a high moral tone, but is achieved through the film’s oddities and trivialities which in all reality end up replacing the high moral and correspondingly obvious theological tone with one which seems more akin to everyday experience, even though in Juno’s case this earthy tone is probably a bit wordier than most.[3] It is here in its banter, humor, and subsequent sweetness that the film’s theological engagement isn’t preached but is lived.

Ideally this is the manner in which the arts operate, according to Mattias Caro, inviting its audience, “to live and to examine the tensions life produces. It encourages us to remember there is more than mere political and moral posturing out there.”[4] In dramatically moving through these tensions between formation and ethics, theology and identity, and sociality and morality the film allows the issues to be holistically and incarnationally engaged in a manner which reveals their inherent inter-connectedness. Thus not only do the characters in the film end up engaging in Juno’s lived tensions and the disruption of her own theological narratives, but the film embodies these tensions in such a way that at the very least the audience emotionally engages these tensions as well.

This same pattern of engagement is at play as a second theological narrative is brought to the table, theodicy itself. As with all of the narratives engaged in the film theodicy is engaged with lightness and humor as Juno’s step-mother, Bren, asserts, “Someone’s going to get a special blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation.” This is theodicy viewed from above, through faith and with a spoonful of levity. Hers is a faith which evidently trusts that any situation can be redeemed as she attempts to make sense of why this difficulty is occurring to and in her family. It is of note that this faith is given to Juno’s step-mother’s character who only inhabits that role because of the dissolution of Juno’s parent’s marriage. Thus she embodies both the need to ask and the impulse to answer the question. But this question is not only asked by her, but in all actuality hangs over the entire movie as film critic D.G.D. Davidson observes, “This is a story of young people who have to find their way through the debris of institutions their elders have destroyed…”[5]

In their negotiation of this systematic brokenness the films characters all tend to attempt to reconstruct the heart of these institutions without resurrecting the institutions themselves, recognizing that sharing blood relations doesn’t necessitate family, but that the family an individual chooses isn’t necessarily dependent upon blood.[6] In this they are engaging theodicy and attempting to overcome it, though again perhaps not in an overtly theological manner. Thus Bren is revealed in some measure to have had a well placed faith as the adoption allows Vanessa, the adoptive mother, to realize her long pursuit of motherhood, and it allows Juno to complete her childhood.[7] Here the question of theodicy is not answered, but if the audience pauses they may be able to experience the mystery at the heart of the answer, which is perhaps all that can really be expected.

[1] Dan Morehead. “Film – Lions for Lambs, Charlie Wilson’s War, Juno.” 1 January 2008. Available at http://americasyoungtheologian.blogspot.com/2008/01/film-lions-for-lambs-charlie-wilsons.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Gavin Richardson. “Juno – The Richardson Family Take.” 28 January 2008. Available at http://www.gavoweb.com/hit_the_back_button_to_mo/2008/01/juno-the-richar.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[4] Mattias A. Caro. “The Artistic Dialogue of Juno.” 21 February 2008. Available at http://www.ajustsociety.org/press/forum.asp?nav=publications&cjsForumID=1091. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[5] D.G.D. Davidson. “Movie Review – Juno.” 26 January 2008. Available at http://www.scificatholic.com/
2008/01/movie-review-juno.html. Internet; accessed 1 April 2009.
[6] Peter Quinn. “Juno.” 8 February 2008. Available at http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/
FILM_20080207_2.htm. Internet, accessed 1 April 2009.
[7] Ibid.

The Sound of Music

2009-02-13T13:49:00.000-08:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I hope to become more regular soon, but I’m also working on my Master’s Thesis, which I’m finding to be very time, energy, and imagination consuming. I evidently find it difficult to write several things at once, at least in this instance. At any rate, I’ve had this rattling around in my head for a bit, so I figured I’d share it. At a Bible study going through the book of I Peter a month or two ago we were asked what we were grateful or thankful for in the context of the second chapter of the book. The first thing that popped into my head, though I have an overabundance for which to be thankful, was the ability to participate in music. To put this in context I’ll have to share a little history, so please bear with me.

One thing that has been constant in my life is a deep love for music. I can remember being 5 years old and really paying attention to what I’d hear on the radio, or what my Mom or Dad would play. I remember my mom really liking Barry Manilow and Billy Joel. I still really enjoy Joel’s music… Barry, not so much (sorry Mr. Manilow, it’s nothing personal). I remember taking note of songs on the radio, and have always had favorites. I also remember my dad taking me to see live classical and choral music. He even took me to the opera, which was largely spectacle to my pre-teen eyes. I still remember the record player I received for my 11th or 12th birthday, and the first album I received with it, Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits. The first album I ever actually bought myself was a-ha’s “Hunting High and Low”… and I’m not ashamed of that at all… no, really. Music was escape, therapy, and prayer. I would spend hours in my room just listening to new and old records.

I knew I wanted to be a part of making music because I just felt it so deeply. I figured the easiest and most natural outlet would be singing. I couldn’t play an instrument, and was too lazy to learn. I have a lazy streak, that I fight to this day, that drives me to try things as long as I can master them quickly and without looking awkward in the process. So learning piano, or guitar was out of the question because it just took too much work. I had tried to pick up clarinet in elementary school, and actually flunked out of it (which is really impossible to do). I remember at the elementary school Christmas concert, not really blowing, or knowing what to play because I just never practiced. Something similar happened with singing. To say it didn’t come naturally to me is an understatement; at least that’s what I’m told by those who had to listen to me sing. I sang with conviction and passion, but without actually hitting the correct notes, which unfortunately for me was one of the key elements of singing. So after several debacles in church where I really just embarrassed myself, though I didn’t know it at the time, I decided I had to learn something else music related. I had to be involved in making music somehow… which is when I decided to learn the drums.

I had rhythm, and there were no notes involved, it seemed like the perfect fit. I had seen other drummers play and knew how drums sets were set up, and decided to try to learn by playing with all my records and CD’s in my room, where I spent so much time listening to music. I would arrange pillows on the corner of my bed for toms, and boxes for high hats and snares and would play with CD’s from The Choir, U2, a-ha, R.E.M., Pink Floyd, Deliverance, Barren Cross, Altar Boys, Billy Joel, Tears for Fears, Mr. Mister, everything from swirly rock to pop to alt to metal. I learned single handed to play syncopated beats from Steve Hindalong of The Choir. When I got to college I purchased an old, small Slingerland jazz set for somewhere around $250 and proceeded to play rock music on it with friends and play very loudly. At any rate that’s when my journey as a musician started and being able to play has meant the world to me every step of the way.

Now I understand how self important and melodramatic much of this sounds, and for that I apologize, at least for the negative parts, but if I’m going to be honest with myself there is always a certain amount of self importance in writing something in a blog for public consumption anyway… but that’s a subject for another day. But part of the reason for sharing a bit of my history is to share the roots of my passion, the roots of what I’m experiencing when I hear music, and when I play music.

I’m thankful I have the opportunity to play drums because I get to experience first hand the beauty and transcendence I sense when I listen to music. There are times when I listen to music that I experience God. Often words are insufficient to describe what happens in those encounters. I’ve come to think that these moments may be the purest form of joy I’ve come to encounter. When I play I feel that joy even deeper at times because I get to participate in the music. I’m also thankful I get to play because I love being a part of creating an atmosphere where that encounter or experience may occur for someone else. Perhaps it’s someone else I’m playing with, or someone listening to what we’re playing, but for God to possibly use our encounter (my encounter with God) to possibly encounter another person humbles me when I truly contemplate it. I’m thankful I get to play because playing has become a language that God and I share. It has become a way that I can speak to God, offering my body, my motion, my mind, my heart in this one act. I’m not one to dance or even raise my hands during worship, but my body is free, in fact at its freest in service to God when I’m behind a drum set. I can be pretty self conscious in certain circles, but all of that leaves me when I play. In short playing music and even more specifically drums often becomes for me an ecstatic experience. So this is what is happening at my best moments when I play, so if you see me behaving strangely behind a drum set you now know at least a little of what might causing such odd behavior. It is behavior for which I am ultimately thankful to God for the opportunity to exhibit.

The image above is from: www.superstock.com/.../1491R-1078970

In Vogue

2008-09-09T07:25:00.000-07:00

Below is a link to an interesting and disturbing New York Times article regarding a story and photo shoot in the most recent Vogue magazine. Generally I'm not interested in fashion, though I have been known to watch Project Runway with my wife (she makes me watch it, really). I believe it does fall under the rubrick of the arts in that it is a creative constructive endeavor. I'm not looking here to define the arts, just to recognize that fashion is a far flung planet in its solar system. At any rate you should probalby read the article before you read any further so you can be conversant with what will follow...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/business/worldbusiness/01vogue.html?no_interstitial

Done? Did the article strike YOU as disturbing. I'm interested in hearing what different people took from the article. I'm intrigued that the director of Vogue India, which I wouldn't have imagined existed not because of any economic status in India, but because Vogue seems to me to be inherently a Western Institution, suggests that those critical of the shoot should "lighten up" given fashion is never meant to be something serious. I can understand his perspective, but speaking for me I'm not troubled by the fashion itself, but by the uncritical and exploitive juxtoposition of such opulence with such abject poverty. It almost seems a bit like a little fashionista insider's joke. By not even identifying those who are modeling these items one almost gets the sense that they might as well be manequins on which these items are placed. In fact since the items are identified and the models are not there is the implicit notion that these items are portrayed as of greater value than the ones wearing them.

On the plus side the photography is well done and reveals a beauty in the models, which I believe was not necessarily the intention of it creators. Oddly their humanity is affirmed in spite of the apparent objectification and dehumanization inherent to the shoot. In the process it almost feels like the dehumanization laid upon these models by these juxtopositions is actually reflected back on to Vogue and the authors of the piece. Perhaps that's just me.

At any rate my question in this very short blurb is , quoting the peasant from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a major source of deep thinking, whether there is a violence to humanity that is inherent in our system of advertising, and perhaps even inherent to our economics? I'm not going to attempt to answer that question here because that's a doozy. But I think this gives a unique voice to that question with a clarity that perhaps should be more common.

The photo above comes from the New York Times article.

Truth and Consequences

2008-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

This blog does not deal directly with politics. It is at its core interested in theological questions found below the title. However there are times where the two overlap and this just happens to be one of those times. A number of weeks ago Evangelical leader/psychologist James Dobson devoted his daily radio program to critique a portion of Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s theological statements made over the course of his campaign, focusing largely on a speech given a bit over a year ago. I’m not interested here in exploring the content of either that criticism or of Mr. Obama’s statements directly, or the politics of either Mr. Dobson or Mr. Obama. I am interested in the theology that might motivate a person to devote a good bit of time and energy developing and crafting a theological critique of a political figure for the purpose of warning those within their theological tradition, and the public at large of the grave political dangers posed by this person’s theology. Granted this is entirely speculation. In reality this will be a jumping off point to think about how we in the Christian community, probably more specifically the Evangelical Protestant community, think about the notion of truth.

Here is the part of the blog where I speculate wildly about Mr. Dobson’s motivations for his criticism. In reality these are only hunches from a member (me) of Mr. Dobson’s theological community who is basing his judgments largely on his intuition, experiences, observations and reason. Let me start by saying that my interest was piqued regarding this dust-up because it was unprovoked by any immediate precipitating episode. Generally speaking this type of rhetoric seems to me to be reserved for urgent incidents of great offense, i.e. a Supreme Court decision, the boycott of a company whose actions have caused an offense, or the actions of a celebrity that cause community outrage etc… To my estimation this lack of impetus indicates that this criticism was deliberate, considered, and earnest. It seems Mr. Dobson made the determined decision to take on Mr. Obama’s theological statements; that this was not done on a whim but was something he took time to craft, consider and communicate, and that it was an accurate representation of beliefs passionately held by Mr. Dobson, convictions I believe he holds as supremely important. Both Mr. Obama’s theological statements and Mr. Dobson’s critical statements are widely available on the internet and given the content of the statements are not my scope of interest I won’t be quoting them here. I will be citing the gist of Mr. Dobson’s complaint as fairly as I can, and offering a few observations about his statements and a certain theology of truth I believe them to be emblematic of, that is that truth, particularly, but not necessarily limited to Biblical truth, lives entirely in the realm of the propositional.

Let me say first that I cut my theological teeth on this notion, and still believe it has some merits in understanding great portions of the Biblical narrative. Especially influential to my understanding in this arena was Francis Schaeffer who I believe is one of the most informed, eloquent and logical voices to lay out the understanding of Biblical truth as propositional truth within the Evangelical world. This understanding draws on a notion that can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy that suggests that what is true is what corresponds to reality. Truth then is solid, fixed and unchanging, and only that which correctly refers to that solid, fixed unchanging reality is true. I would suggest this is the near consensus understanding of truth among Evangelicals, though it is a large field of ongoing debate within philosophical circles. Any reference to this truth then must be done in the form of propositions, for example, God is good, in order to for it to be understood, or true.

This emphasis on the proposition as almost the sole communicator of truth I would suggest begins to congeal around the ideas of the Enlightenment and Rationalism in the 18th century. There grew a notion that in order for an idea to be true it had to be reasonable, and logical, and must be able to be stated in those terms. Thus truth then must be able to be stated in a reasonable, logical form, and reduced to fit into a series of descriptive sentences. There are definite merits to this construct of describing truth. If a particular proposition can be shown to be unreasonable and illogical one can set it aside, relatively confident that it hasn’t passed the scrutiny test that truth should overcome if it corresponds to reality. Inherent here is the assumption that reality is by its nature rational and logical as the creation of a rational and logical God. This becomes a means by which truth is made manageable, in essence boiling it down in an effort to know through reason what is true and what is false. This of course isn’t unique to the thinkers of the enlightenment, but I would suggest that with them this understanding became the hub around which truth became organized. If truth didn’t pass muster with human reason and logic it could not be truth.

Fast forward to the present context, and I believe Evangelicals have adopted much of this framework for truth into their belief systems, perhaps uncritically, and often unknowingly in that often this is taught in Sunday Schools and from pulpits as Biblical thinking. God is a God of order and reason, the universe is set up to follow the laws of nature and of God, and because of this, through reason we can come to know much about God, hence the Psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God and Earth proclaims God’s handiwork.” This is the understanding of the world that gave birth to the scientific revolution according to Schaeffer. Many don’t understand that this framework is a synthesis of the bible’s truth claims with the Enlightenment’s definition and understanding of truth. I believe this is the foundation of truth from which Dobson speaks when he criticizes Obama’s theological statements. I do not assume to speak for Dobson on this, but I suspect, based on the theological teachings that come directly from him, particularly on his radio show, and the teaching that is generated by the organization he is responsible for, Focus on the Family, that he would generally agree with a good portion of the understanding of truth laid out above.

With this general framework of truth established, I think it’s important to glance at a few of the particular truths Dobson wants to defend, not for the purpose of endorsing, or criticizing them, but in order to further examine the manner in which they are defended as a means to provide further incite into some ways this understanding of propositional truth can manifest itself in to the church and the world. This list is by no means exhaustive, but will draw on a few concepts that illustrate this framework in action. First, Dobson would suggest the Bible is the absolutely true, Holy Spirit inspired word of God, and so is supreme in its authority in not only the Christian’s life, but in everyone’s lives because it is God’s directed communication to all of humanity. Second, he would suggest humanity is separated from God collectively and individually because of sin, and cannot be reconciled by their own doing given they were the ones that initiated the separation. Third, the second person of the Trinity came to Earth to become Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ in order to restore that broken relationship with God through his own perfect life, and sacrificial death, taking in his body the punishment for the sins of all who would place their faith in that action, and rising from the dead as evidence of its accomplishment.

Any observer can see that these are matters of epic, even eternal importance. Because of this Dobson’s passion and sense of urgency are understandable. If people are not reconciled to God here within this framework they will be forever separated from God after this life is over. Dobson’s aggressive criticism of Obama needs to be put within this framework of someone convinced of the truth, who believes that other’s understanding of the truth of which he is convinced will determine their eternity. Again I am not examining these beliefs themselves, much of which incidentally I hold as true, but the manner in which they are communicated, reduced to propositions in which one must place ones faith. Within this framework, if a person doesn’t assent intellectually to the inspiration of scripture, the absolute sinfulness of humanity, and the substitutionary atonement by Jesus, believing first and foremost that they are true, one cannot be a Christian and consequently remains separated from God. Again, I don’t presume to speak for Dobson, though I suspect there isn’t much with which he would disagree with the framework laid out above, and I don’t intend to criticize him as an individual, or “call him out”, rather I’m intending to use his criticism to illuminate a problem. I would suggest the framework in which these beliefs are placed create unintentional problems for those who embrace it which ripple out into their speech, actions and organizations.

The first issue that arises with this understanding of truth is that it tends to absolutize and thus confuses the individual’s understanding of truth with the truth itself. In other words truth becomes subjugated to reason and logic, and the doctrine obtained through reason becomes the only valid interpretation of scripture. When this happens reason has been made the hub around which truth must orbit, thus making truth a satellite of reason. If one must assent that a particular statement, proposition or notion is true before one places one’s faith in that statement, proposition or notion, then reason has been placed before faith, both chronologically, and necessarily.

It must be granted here that reason is a necessary relative of faith, and that ideally reason must at some point enter into the decisions made to place trust or faith in something or someone, however in this construct reason has been made necessary, excluding any faith decisions made without an intellectual surrender to propositional facts. This is a faith based on the correct facts and information; therefore if the facts and information are distorted, rearranged, or muddied one can never be sure if one is placing ones faith in the correct propositions. This is a faith that is dependent upon human reason which if it places faith in an incorrect proposition concerning God has doomed itself to be separated from God because it is a misplaced faith. With knowledge placed necessarily and chronologically before faith, any malicious person can destroy any possibility of a true faith simply by distorting, and that only slightly, the facts upon which that knowledge is based. This leads to such an emphasis on factual correctness that faith ends up more about factuality than about truth. Defending the faith becomes simply a rallying around those facts upon which the faith is based.

I believe this is why Dobson in his radio show concerning Obama is so concerned that he is “intentionally distorting scripture”. Because a valid faith in this framework is based on the proper proposition, or information, Dobson must undercut the incorrect information and inform people of the correct information, lest they be led into placing their faiths in invalid propositions. You can almost feel the weight of responsibility he feels to correct the bad information in the public arena as one who has access to both the correct information and the public airwaves. This leads to a second issue with this understanding: that it translates into at best a perceived proud, condescending attitude, if not actually reflecting one.

There is a sense in which this framework of knowledge, which depends on faith in accurate propositions, creates an inequitable relationship between the holder of the true knowledge and those who lack that knowledge, including those who profess a Christian faith. In other words truth becomes a commodity that ideally must be given away, but is still something its holder owns and others need. Thus it creates a qualitative separation between the two groups, and creates a gulf between “us” and “them”, which can be seen in much of Dobson’s basic cultural assumptions and rhetoric.

The assumption is the “us” who have the knowledge are either good because of it or the faith it produces, or are on the side of good because of it, and those who don’t possess this true knowledge are by default inherently bad, or on the side of evil or at least immorality. This manifests itself in Dobson’s attempt to correct Obama’s bad information, attempting to replace his “false” propositions with “true” propositions. Placed within a rhetorical and polemic framework of concern that people not be deceived this tends to come across as an over confident, possibly self important religious figure throwing information scattershot to and at what he apparently believes to be an untrained, uninformed audience who need this information in order to construct the correct propositions necessary to arrange their cloth of faith. The mode the argument takes comes across as both holier and smarter than thou, and seems to indicate a low estimation of the audience’s ability to weigh these statements themselves, not to mention the ability of the Holy Spirit to work in their lives. Simply put there exists at least an apparent lack of humility and possible evidence for the Proverb that knowledge puffs up.

There are other issues that could be addressed, but this will suffice for this arena (this is a blog, not a book). Speaking positively, there are a few points I believe it’s important to note in attempting to frame an alternative to what is in essence a supernatural rationalism. First, according to Hebrews, faith is, “being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (NIV). There’s a sense here in which faith is a source of knowledge. In other words there are certain things one can only know through faith, hence the author of Hebrews emphasis on surety and certainty. Through faith in Christ and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit one gains access into the sphere of truth that exists in God, the Three-in-One. This is knowledge unavailable to those who have yet to kneel before the crucified and resurrected One and is a knowledge graced through the Holy Spirit. I don’t doubt that Dobson would acknowledge these suggestions; however the framework of knowledge that has been discussed at least in action seems to undermine this understanding of knowledge birthed by faith.

If sure knowledge of the proper proposition comes necessarily before faith, then where is there room for the growth of knowledge? Granted there is a difference between factual knowledge and experienced knowledge, which is part of the point. There are large portions of the active relationship with a living God that can’t be captured in a proposition, and thus the original propositions one believed when one came to the faith grow and possibly even change over time. If one comes to grow in a belief which changes over time, does the person lose a valid faith in valid propositions, or was the original faith invalid because it was placed in an invalid proposition?

The second point I would like to note has already been mentioned in the first point, and that is that because this framework of knowledge attempts to “boil down” truth to its essence, making it manageable and understandable it often actually distorts that truth. The one reducing it may be able capture its essence, but you lose its context and proportions. You’re able to manage the truth, deciding what is true and what isn’t, but are unable to manage its depth and breadth. What is worse is that often these constructed propositions are confused with the truth itself. Instead of understanding that they are human constructs toward understanding a fuller truth, windows toward that end, we treat them as the truth itself, and limit ourselves to the playpen of the propositional, when the truth bound up in the Being of God lives and breathes in the wide world around us outside of what we've built to contain that truth. To quote a old T-Shirt of mine (because everyone knows the best theology comes from a good T-Shirt), “God is bigger than your box”. I would suggest the same can be said of truth.

This is a short and limited critique, and I’m sure riddled with holes in logic. The largest point here is that truth, both in and of itself, and our management of it is more than our expressions of it, and greater than our understanding of it. When we say that, “God is good”, or “God is love” or “Jesus died for your sins”, we are speaking the truth, however none of those propositions captures the whole truth behind the statement. Paraphrasing Elizabeth Johnson, theology, and for our purposes propositional truth, is simply a finger pointing to God.

Blessed With Work

2008-06-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, the unthinkable has occurred, I am a father. I’m close to 6 weeks into this new fatherhood thing and I’ll tell you, it’s not for the feint of heart. Not that it’s bad mind you, but it is a lot of work caring for someone who can do almost absolutely nothing for himself. But before I explore my experience of fatherhood here to fore, let me share Erika’s and my experience getting to this place starting Friday May 16, Erika’s last scheduled say at work before her maternity leave.

Bump, the name given to Orion by Erika’s mom before he was born because we wouldn’t reveal his name to anyone, was due Tuesday, May 20th, the day arbitrarily assigned by the Dr. based on the size of the baby in utero and the conception date estimation at the time of the early exams. This of course is not a schedule, and we were prepared for the baby to be late given this was Erika’s first. Friday after we left work (we work together) we got some dinner and went to see Prince Caspian. We figured it was the last movie we’d be able to see in the theater for a while. We were right. The next day, Saturday, Erika began having erratic contractions during our yard sale, and into the afternoon. I was scheduled to go see Phil Keaggy in concert in Joppa MD, and Erika’s parents and some friends of the family were coming over to play games at our place. I was planning on putting my concert plans on hold, but her contractions stopped, and she said I should go. So I went, but called every hour or so to see how she was doing. I got back around midnight and found her parents in our living room with her timing her contractions, which were about 10 to 15 minutes apart. We decided to try to sleep (as if she could sleep through contractions), and her parents stayed on our sleeper sofa. When the contractions got to about 5 minutes apart at around 6 in the morning we decided to call Erika’s doula and head to the hospital. We got there around 7, were escorted to our room, and began dealing in earnest with Erika’s contractions.

The hospital was amazing. I’m inserting heaps of praise here for the nurses and doctors at Calvert Memorial Hospital (although I could never figure out what the hospital was in memorial of, unless it was Lord Baltimore himself, but I digress). Heaps of praise should also be piled upon Cheryl, Erika’s doula who was an amazing coach for Erika. Erika wanted to try to have the baby all natural, no drugs or epidurals. She also wanted to be ambulatory while in labor, which means being free for long periods of time from the tethers of the fetal baby monitor. Because they baby was doing well, they allowed that freedom, tethering her only for brief stints every couple of hours. After a roller coaster ride of ups and downs in the delivery room the baby was birthed into the world at 4:43 PM on May 18th. Cheryl later commented that the time of birth made it seem like a normal day at the office. Erika’s mom and dad were in the room, and her mom actually cut the cord, because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. My Dad and his girlfriend, and my Mom and Step Dad were also in the hospital and we all celebrated by getting Italian food and eating it in the delivery room afterward, which in retrospect seems kind of creepy and weird, but it didn’t at the time, and neither Erika nor I had eaten all day and were famished. We settled down that night and had the best night of sleep that I suspect we’ll experience for the next couple of years.

That brings us to today, almost weeks into young Orion’s life, and close to 6 weeks into our endeavor into parenthood. It has been different from what I thought it would be. I was expecting something as trying as the Mali trip, but long term. I was expecting to have to confront my selfishness, impatience, and inflexibility, and I have had to confront them from time to time, but I’ve been surprised that my sense of dread was unjustified. After the initial shock of being responsible for this utterly defenseless child who can’t even control his own limbs wore off, I found myself enjoying him, and enjoying the role of watching him so Erika can get a extra 20 minutes of sleep, or reading to him, though he can’t understand or see the pictures, or providing him with a pacifier to disperse all of that sucking energy, or even changing diapers (though enjoy probably isn’t the right word for that). I could probably think of some great theological insights in all of this, but I think I’ll just leave the theological insight at that, the joy of fatherhood.

There’s a great line in the movie “Return to Me”, probably one of the sappiest chick flick movies ever created, but as unlikely as the story is, it is a movie grounded in a nice reality (largely influenced I think by the Catholicism of Bonnie Hunt, its writer/director, but I digress). The grandfather of our ingénue in the story is cleaning up at the restaurant he owns when the granddaughter offers to help. He refuses her help and tells her, “I’ve been blessed with work”. I kind of feel that way. Orion adds a lot of work into our lives, especially Erika’s at this point, but it’s a work I don’t seem to mind as much. To quote Erika, it is “pain with a purpose”. And so far, and I imagine it will be this way down the road, it’s been very much worth it.

The Face of the Earth

2008-05-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

This will serve as a confirmation that I haven't fallen off the face of the Earth. I will be posting some reflections on here soon about becoming a father, which happened 5/18/08 when Orion Connor Fallin was born, which of course has taken up a lot of time and mental capacity. At any rate that will follow soon, and no I haven't abandoned my blog. Thanks for anyone's patience who reads any of these. I appreciate your interest. Stick with me and more will flow out soon.

Downside Upside Down

2008-04-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Most of what I’m posting here at this point has some relation to school, largely because it consumes so much of my thought and time. So what follows is another exercise in my speaking class. We were asked to give a 5 minute sermon from one of 5 passages of scripture. I chose Genesis 32 and 33, and focused squarely on Jacob’s wrestling with the angel/God, and was struck by something new, which is always nice.

In the telling of the story in Genesis Jacob leaves Haran and his Father-In-Law Laban to return to the land of his now deceased father Isaac, and his estranged brother Esau who he had cheated out of their father’s blessing some 15 to 20 years earlier. As he approaches from the east he seems to realize he has no place in this new/old land, and that he and his caravan of livestock, servants, and family, including at least 12 children with four different women were vulnerable, exposed and at his brother’s mercy. He is unsure of how he will be received by his brother, and when he learns that his brother is coming to meet him with a large, and by inference, well armed group of men he fears the worst. He fears the slaughter of his servants, and his family, and above all seems to fear his own death. In a move to dim what he perceives is his brother’s anger he sends a group of servants ahead with a portion of his flock as a gift to Esau from “your servant Jacob”. He then sends his family ahead, the two servants with whom he has children, Bilhah and Zilphah, then Leah, and her children, finally his beloved Rachael, and her son Joseph. He watches them ford the River Jabbok, and fade into the distance, and he is left there alone, dreading the dawn of the next day. The only thing separating Jacob now from his trouble is the River Jabbok.

That evening as he was alone with his thoughts, perhaps crying out to God for the safety of his family, he is blindsided by the force of something knocking him to the ground. This wasn’t an animal, and it was clear from the arms wrapped around him that this wasn’t Esau. This was a stranger attacking him; someone Jacob neither recognized nor knew. They fought, and wrestled for hours, in and out of the river, sweaty, muddy, and panting. Sometimes they found themselves just holding each other, waiting for the other to make the next move. That’s when it happens. This stranger comes down on Jacob’s hip with a force that made Jacob believe he could have done it at any time. Jacob has a new problem now; he is fighting for his life, clinging to this stranger. As morning approaches the stranger demands that Jacob let him go, but Jacob, who is in no position to make demands, demands that this man bless him. Perhaps Jacob was afraid that this man would finish him off if he let him go, or perhaps this is the same Jacob that seemed to want everyone’s blessing. In this exchange however, Jacob is given a new name, Israel, and the man’s blessing before he disappears into the morning. And Jacob is left again alone, now broken, and still in trouble.

I believe this can be classified as very strange encounter, one for which I imagine most of us have no template. It is however an encounter through which Jacob gained a strange knowledge of God. It was a knowledge that isn’t available through study or books. It isn’t available through story, or family. It is only available through struggle. Jacob wrestled, grappled, and struggled with this man, who we are left to assume from the text, is the Divine taking on human form, and is simultaneously blessed and injured. If Jacob had not encountered this man it is plausible to suggest he would not have been injured in this way, but neither would he have been blessed. It seems that neither would have been experienced apart from the other, or apart from this struggle and violence.

O’Connor in her collection of essays and speeches Mystery and Manners speaking of the characters in her stories suggests, “I have found that violence is strangely capable of returning my characters to reality and preparing them to accept their moment of grace. Their heads are so hard that almost nothing else will do the work. This idea, that reality is something to which we must be returned at considerable cost… is one that is implicit in the Christian view of the world.” This reality to which a character, or person must be returned can be seen as the strange knowledge that Jacob came to through his struggle. He came to a clear view of the reality of the fierce, free God of mercy. This knowledge was gained through struggle, breaking and blessing. In the moment of his breaking, Jacob is stripped of any notion of self sufficiency or pride, and is left to cling to this man, dependant on the grace of his blessing to keep his life, realizing he was unable to secure that life himself. The blessing he finally received was received at a great cost to Jacob. In light of O’Connor’s notion that violence, suffering, and struggle sometimes prepares us for our moment of grace, it seems the price of that blessing may have been determined by the amount of pride and self sufficiency that had to be overcome in Jacob before he allowed himself to experience the safe arms of grace and mercy.

In Frederick Buechner’s book Son of Laughter, from which this sermon/blog liberally borrowed as I laid out the storyline above, he describes Jacob’s experience of the blessing.

“I do not remember the words of his blessing or even if there were words. I remember the blessing of his arms holding me and the blessing of his arms letting me go. I remember as blessing the black shape of him against the rose colored sky. I remember as blessing the one glimpse I had of his face. I was more terrible than the face of dark, or of pain, or of terror. It was the face of light. No words can tell of it. Silence cannot tell of it. Sometimes I cannot believe that I saw it and lived but that I only dreamed I saw it. Sometimes I believed I saw it and that I only dream I live.”

In the end Jacob’s experience of grace, and by extension perhaps at times our experience of grace, came across to him as violence. This was a violence not bound up in some Divine malevolence, or a Divine desire to either discipline or correct Jacob, rather it seems that Jacob experienced God’s attempt to overcome his independent, self sufficient, self important pride as violence because that is what pride inherently is, violent. It is a supplanting of God in favor of the self. It flips reality on its head attempting to place the created ontologically above the creator. Any attempt to correct this then will have to travel through that barrier of violent pride in order to find itself again on the side of dependant obedience and faith. Our trip to pride is experienced as violence by God, and God’s effort to correct that and flip reality right side up if you will may be experienced as violence by the one who is being returned to reality. This is why even in this violence suffered by Jacob, one can view God as gentle and merciful, applying only the pressure or force necessary to attempt to turn Jacob’s world right side up.

I have often heard people describe their experience of God as God tearing their world apart, or turning it upside down. From our perspective that’s exactly what’s happening, because from our perspective as those who are upside down in our world of pride and self sufficiency, the experience of having our world rearranged by or around God feels like being turned upside down, when in fact we’re being turned right side up. A few years ago I went to see Peter Gabriel in concert, it was wonderful, and as is his tendency, very theatrical. When he performed his song Downside Up he and his daughter who was singing backup literally were latched into the superstructure of the stage and performed a good portion of the song literally upside down. Of course if they stayed there long enough that upside down perspective would come to look normal and right side up. In reality as creatures of pride and hubris that is our perspective that God attempts to right through grace.

It is important to note in this construct of the violence of God’s grace, this isn’t God forcing humanity to accept grace, but is God attempting through grace to create circumstances in which a person can come to grace on grace’s terms, empty handed and full of need. When one believes one has sufficient reserves, and an inherent ability to navigate their troubles themselves, they don’t perceive their need of God, they don’t have a proper view of their upside down horizon. Sometimes in order for us to fall on the mercy and grace of God our horizon needs to be turned upside down so we see the world as it really is. Unfortunately we have the freedom, and the inclination to return to our upside down perspective, which God allows. Thus the struggle begins all over again, with God turning our world upside down again, and again out of love and in mercy, and by grace so that like Jacob we can participate in the blessings of God, even as simultaneously beautiful and terrible as they may appear.

The image above is taken from:
http://www.papabear.com/pgsum04favgraphics/milandowns.jpg

Palm Sunday Belated

2008-04-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a story I had to write, and subsequently tell/embody for a class. I kind of like the shape of it. It's very short, but I thought I'd share it:

So Jesus and his disciples were on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. They had lived together, traveled together, eaten meals, told jokes, exorcized spirits together. They had seen the best and worst in each other, and had grown into a tight knit group of friends. After three years they were family. And now they were to celebrate Passover together in Jerusalem as a family.

Given Jesus’ growing notoriety, or notoriousness, depending on your perspective, the larger Jerusalem grew on the horizon, the larger the crowds were that were traveling with them. Evidently word of Jesus’ teaching, healing, and love for the fatherless, the widow, the lepers, tax collectors and really anyone who crossed his path had reached the ears of many because they came out to meet him with an expectation that felt to his disciples like electricity in the air.

Jesus had told two of his disciples to go ahead into a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem to find a colt that had been tied up, which no one had ever ridden, to untie it and bring it to him. He said if anyone asks you why you’re doing this, simply tell them The Lord needs it and will send it back shortly. When they returned with the colt they spread their cloaks on it. Jesus sat on the colt and as they came upon the outskirts of Jerusalem the crowds which had continued growing larger and larger through the past several villages began laying palms on the ground in front of the Colt singing, HOSANNA, BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, BLESSED IS THE COMING KINGDOM OF OUR FATHER DAVID, HOSANNA IN THE HIGHEST.

In this spontaneous upwelling of community adoration the disciples began to believe that these crowds were seeing the Jesus they had lived with, the one Peter had confessed as the Messiah. They had great expectations for the week ahead, and Jesus seemed to embrace their expectations rebuking a group Pharisees who were livid because of the crowd’s open declaration, reserved for Kings of Israel, telling them if the crowds kept silent the stones themselves would cry out. This was an amazing time to be one so close to Jesus.

What the disciples didn’t see was that they hadn’t embraced Jesus’ expectations. To their shock and horror they would find it would be Jesus' expectations, and his adoration and obedience to the Father that would shape the coming week and indeed each of their lives in ways they weren’t presently able to conceive of or imagine.

We Have Seen His Glory

2008-03-12T15:05:00.000-07:00

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14 NIV)

This verse has been rolling around in my head for a few months now as I consider the incarnation. The reflection that follows was born during my trip to Mali. The six of us who were part of the team took turns preparing daily devotions, and the seed of this reflection was the devotion I shared while we were there.

John’s introduction of Jesus in his Gospel as the Divine Logos is full of rich imagery and metaphor waiting to be mined by the of believers and theologians who would attempt to grapple with John’s words in the centuries that would follow. The notion of that Divine Logos not just taking on flesh, but becoming flesh and living with and among humanity has spawned hundreds of thousands of pages of thoughts, insights and reflections. So what follows here is nothing new, just some of my insights and reflections as I work through some of these ideas, and what they mean for my life, which may speak to where others are in their lives as well.

In reading this verse I’ve always tended to focus on the tangible, that is The Word, Jesus Christ, becoming flesh and living, full of humanity here in our beautiful mess. This is the incarnation, the Divine becoming flesh and living with us, speaking in and through flesh what had already been communicated through the prophets, which is the heart of the God who, “led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love”, and who, “lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (Hosea 11.4 NIV). This image of the transcendent, creative God of the universe choosing to be limited to the confines of physicality as a means of sharing God’s love for and esteem of humanity provokes and humbles me, and I believe opens a window into the very nature and character of God. It moves me past the first sentence of the verse to the second.

John goes on to say that in this movement of love from transcendence to immanence, from spirit to flesh, from “light” to “darkness” we have seen God’s glory. In my own life when I’ve thought of glory, I’ve tended to default to the image aroused in my head by the second verse of the Christmas carol, “Silent Night”:

Silent night, holy night!

Shepherds quake at the sight

Glories stream from heaven afar

Heavenly hosts sing Alleluia!

I picture light streaming from heaven to Earth, as if breaking through a cloudy day, shining a light into darkness. Assuming that Jesus wasn’t actually physically beaming light, glowing as it were like Moses coming down from Sinai while on Earth, I think we’ll have to assume that our beholding of God’s glory through the incarnation must mean something different. (Although the last verse of “Silent Night” does have the newborn Christ emitting “radiant beams” from his face, but we’ll chalk that up to artistic license).

I believe John may clarify the form of this glory later in his Gospel as he shares his account of Jesus’ prayers in the Garden of Gethsemene in chapter 17. Jesus begins by praying for the 12, and the approaching storm they would have to navigate. He then goes on to pray not only for them, but, “also for those who will believe in me through their message” (17.20). He prays for the unity among these believers, and their inclusion into the inner relations of the Godhead (a notion by itself deserving of hundreds of thousands of pages of reflection), linking the world’s recognition of the authenticity of Jesus’ actions, and authority of his teaching directly to this unity. He then drops a bomb that completely unravels my “Silent Night” notion of glory. Jesus prays, “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one” (17.22 NIV). He goes on to say, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world” (17.24 NIV). John says that humanity has seen the glory of God embodied in Jesus’ humanity; he then shares Jesus’ statement that he has given those who have believed in him the glory the Father had given him. If we follow this, then “the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” is given to us as those who have trusted in Jesus as the Christ. It seems that this glory is part of the incarnation, and a part that we can and are intended to participate in. What is this glory then, if not streams of light shining from God?

Hans Urs Von Balthasar would contend that there is a connection between the notion of glory and beauty, although I’ve heard many mainline protestants and evangelicals make that connection as well. The most notable that I’m familiar with would be Karl Barth, and John Piper. Thinking in this vein the glory of God could be equated with the beauty or attractiveness of God. Moving quickly and loosely here, then, John can speak of seeing the glory or beauty of God among us because that beauty is wrapped up in the grace of the self giving love of God, embodied in that movement from heaven to earth, from transcendence to immanence, and from “light” to “darkness”. God was, is and will always be love, but that love was communicated at a new and unique depth in the incarnation, in the Divine’s participation in our finiteness. This is the form of glory or beauty at the intersection of the Divine and the human. This grace and love is inherently striking, drawing and transporting us, perhaps even involuntarily to God, overwhelmed by God’s attractiveness, and possibly not able to articulate why. I think there may be a corollary here between our experience of the attractiveness of God and our experience of exceptional earthly beauty. Some would even argue that there is no separation between the two. There are times that we’re overwhelmed by something in a painting, or in a song, or a movie, or even a sunset or a mountain. We see and are struck by what we’ve encountered and are filled with what I can only describe as joy. I believe that the grace and love of God work in a similar fashion, in that they overwhelm our senses, fill us with joy, and therefore create a desire for the object that is the source of that joy, namely God.

So then if one grants the notion that graceful, self giving love is the form of Divine glory and beauty, then there is a sense in which Jesus’ gift of glory to us is our participation in this form. In other words our participation in and emulation of that graceful, self giving love of God is us as believers sharing in the glory and beauty of God. As we imitate God’s actions in this manner, interacting with those around us, we recreate the attractiveness of God, and so participate in God’s glory. This participation then is also how the beauty of God becomes real in the lives of those around us. In the same way the love of God was embodied in Christ in the incarnation, it is embodied in us as we imitate the self giving love of God in our incarnation. In this understanding when a person imitates this love they take on the form of Divine glory, embody the attractiveness of God, and so become a conduit for the worship of God in that God is the only true source of this attractiveness and beauty, therefore the Divine, namely Christ, is at the heart of both the action of the one loving and the worship of the one recognizing the source of the action. Therefore when a person gracefully loves they witness to and argue through their action for the preeminent glory and beauty of God.

“We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” We see it not only in the life of Christ, but also when we imitate the graceful loving actions of our Saviour. As we emulate these actions, we too embody the attractiveness and beauty of God and participate in the glory given to Christ by the Father. As I attempt to continue to understand these relationships I stand in perpetual amazement, simultaneously filled with awe and joy as I stand witness to the beauty of the grace lavished by God through the love and mercy found in Jesus Christ.

Reflections on Mali

2008-02-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: What follows may come across as an overwrought, “what I did on my summer vacation”. If it does I apologize. To be honest I think I’m still working through a lot of what I saw and experienced in Mali, and I suppose I will be for a while. But it’s been a few weeks since I returned, so I can at least share some of my ruminations thus far, for better or for worse. Let me just say first that my trip to Mali was literally the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I didn’t expect this to be the case, which probably contributed to the difficult time I had. I had expected to be challenged, but I expected I’d be the strong one helping everyone else on our team. The reality was quite the opposite. But I’m jumping ahead; let me share what we were doing in Mali to begin with.

Around 2 years ago a member of our congregation, Jason Beach, volunteered for the Peace Corps, and was assigned to the country of Mali in West Africa. He was designated a water/sanitation volunteer and assigned to the rural village of Koumantou, the capital of its commune, the equivalent of a county in the U.S. Upon learning of Jason’s endeavors, one of the pastors of our church, Jay McKinley, proposed the possibility of leading a team from our church to help Jason with a project. Our project took shape from there. Jason’s major project in Koumantou was the creation of soak pits that keep standing water underground, thus preventing mosquitoes from using it to breed. The problem of standing water also arose from a drainage ditch that drained water from the town to a large wash containing rice fields. It had existed as a ditch around 3 feet deep, and around 3 feet wide, but had filled in over the years so that much of it was just flat ground. In the rainy season the water that would have been collected by the ditch flooded the homes and businesses along the road. When the rain let up, water would collect in the uneven places as well. This is the project Jason proposed to Jay, and that we eventually tackled.

There were 5 of us who left the church January 20th for Dulles Airport, Pastor Jay McKinley, Joel Wagner, Mitch LeFevre, Christian Hanley, and me. It felt to me like we were leaving for an adventure. I felt very sure of myself, apprehensive because I hate flying, but anticipating an amazing experience. We had been meeting once every other week or so for around 3 months preparing ourselves for this. We boarded the plane around 10 and landed in Paris about 6 ½ hours later. We then boarded our flight for Bamako, the capital of Mali, and landed there around 5 ½ hours later. Everything had been perfect thus far. I was pretty tired, I don’t sleep on planes, but that was expected. The experience at the airport was far easier than I expected. Customs was easy, retrieving our trunks was easy, and finding Jason outside of the airport was easy. We even found two cabs quickly and easily. We were planning on staying the night in Bamako at Avant Ministries, a facility that houses different ministry and missions personnel on a short term basis. On the way to the mission house we encountered a football mob. The Africa Cup was just beginning when we arrived, and Mali had won its first game, and everyone was ecstatic, so much so a group stopped our cabs opened our doors and tried to take our hats. We found out later that Jason, who had been in Mali 16 months, was pretty freaked out. At any rate I really wasn’t perhaps because I didn’t know enough to know to be afraid. Ignorance I suppose was bliss. I slept wonderfully at Avant, under my first mosquito net.

The next morning we left for Koumantou. We rented a small van outside of the mission compound which took us to the bus station. Jason purchased our tickets in our Malian names, which he had given us in the states. I was Solo Dumbia. We also had Alou Sangare, Salif Keita, a Coulabale, and a Kone’. The Malians got a kick out of the white guys boarding the bus when the names were read. Koumantou is about a 4 to 5 hour bus ride from Bamako. The Bus ride was uneventful. We left around 8, and the morning was cool, so the bus ride was very comfortable, aside from the seats.

We arrived in Koumantou around noon, and were immediately greeted by the mayor as we stepped off the bus. People from the town grabbed our trunks and bags, and we were ushered to a welcoming ceremony outside of the mayor’s offices. There was a crowd of around 200. There were drummers, and singers, a small sound system, and chairs set aside for us. We were greeted by the mayor, the adjunct mayor, the local imam, and Pastor Chaka from Jason’s Malian church. They were all very welcoming, and friendly, and full of blessings for us, which is a part of the culture. As a drummer I loved watching what they were doing with the drums, in essence as a drum chorus. Three drummers playing 3 very different, but relatively simple drum lines created these amazing beats that I’d been trying to recreate with one djembe, no wonder it never sounded exactly right to me.

From there we were escorted through very dusty, trash strewn streets or alleys to the concession that would be our home for the next two weeks. We each chose a circular mud brick hut to stay in. They had concrete floors and walls, and a thatch roof. They were actually pretty nice. I had seen them in pictures, but sitting there on my trunk in my hut was a very different experience. As I set up my tent, which we were using as portable mosquito nets, kids watched me from the outside, and I started to feel very foreign, and far away, and alone. After all of the wonderful experiences traveling to Koumantou, now that I was there I realized I couldn’t leave, and would be there for 2 weeks, half of a month.

That night I couldn’t get comfortable in the cots we brought, and ended up unsuccessfully trying to sleep in the concrete floor. I understood Rich Mullins difficulty with the dark in a new way. He sang in Hold Me Jesus that he woke up in the night and felt the dark, and in Hard to Get he asks Jesus if he could remember just how long a night could get. I just couldn’t relax, and I couldn’t get the comforts of home out of my head. I realized just how much I depend on the technology around me to numb me to myself. At home if I can’t sleep, I’d get up and watch some TV, or play a video game until I was sufficiently tired. Here I was alone with my own thoughts, fears, pains, and history, with no way to take the edge off the voices that were screaming at me. The next night was the same thing. In three days and two nights I had only gotten about 3 hours of sleep, and I wasn’t able to sleep in the day either for fear that I’d be up all night. What was even more frustrating is that I had taken sleep aids which didn’t put me to sleep. We had arrived in Koumantou on Tuesday. By Wednesday I was fraying emotionally. By Thursday, the beginning of our ditch digging project I was putting on a brave face, or at least trying to, but I was a tumult of anxiousness and fear underneath. The days were fine, but I was terrified of the night, and the hours of being alone with myself and failing to sleep.

An hour into the ditch digging project I had to hurry back to our concession because of an urgent need, only to find our contraption brought for those needs, called a luggable loo, basically a bucket with a toilet seat attached, locked in a hut. With the “need” being as urgent as it was, I was quickly acquainted with the nyegan, basically a whole in the ground with a type of concrete floor. Given I was already unraveling emotionally this pretty much sent me over the edge, and I spent the rest of the morning lying on the floor of my hut, obsessing over the comforts of home.

The next day I lost my breakfast before heading to the work sight, but made it through the morning. I didn’t eat lunch, yet when we went back to the work site I threw up all the water I had been drinking. Jay walked me back and on the way back we talked about the possibility of my early return to Maryland. I didn’t think I could take another week of this. When the team returned from the work sight they met with me and really encouraged me and suggested I would regret leaving early, and that I should at least wait until Sunday. It was the team showing me the grace of God, and I agreed to at least stick it out until then. It ended up being exactly what I needed, the possibility of leaving, and a deadline. It was the spotter in weight lifting in essence saying, “OK, 2 more reps”. I was still sick on Saturday, but began to eat MRE’s in the evenings, so as to get some calories in me. I had moved into Jay’s hut to sleep the night before and had begun to actually sleep. The next day Sunday would be the day everything turned around for me.

Sunday we slept in, got ready and went to Jason’s church, The Evangelical Protestant Church of Koumantou. It was a small concrete building, with a cross on the outside, and arched steel windows that propped open for ventilation. We were escorted to the front of the church and seated on the platform, which in and of itself was very humbling. Christian stayed back because he began to feel sick the night before. The service started with music, which consisted of 2 drummers and the people’s voices. The people brought their own hymnals, or knew the music. Many of the songs were translated English songs and I recognized the tunes. When they sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms in their own language I recognized the tune and was able to sing along. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of singing this song in English with these believers singing the same song in Bambera. In addition I was overwhelmed by the idea in the song. Up to that point I had been so focused on my discomfort, and my problems that I wasn’t able to conceive of God’s presence there, and so I was trying to muddle through, pushing through on my own brute strength. I was moved by the love and gentleness of God who can keep me “safe and secure from all alarms” and on whose everlasting arms I could always lean. It was familiar, yet new. It was God speaking to me through my language, music. We were asked to do one of our songs, so Jason retrieved his guitar, I borrowed the djembe and the rest of the guys sang Open the Eyes of My Heart. It was wonderful to be able to play drums, it felt familiar and it enabled me to focus even more. Later Jay’s message on John 13, speaking of washing each other’s feet, and serving one another again reminded me of why I was there, to attempt to embody that self giving love of God. The church service was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. It was the first time I had sensed God’s presence in Africa, and I never felt that absence of that presence again while I was there.

Monday we returned to work on the ditch, and while it wasn’t easy, in fact the work was extraordinarily difficult; I had emotionally turned a corner and was able to at least try to focus on something other than myself, namely the project, the Malians, and the team. I had greatly over estimated my conditioning and stamina. I don’t remember having this much difficulty with manual labor at 25, let alone 30, but I worked as I could, which was less than Joel and Mitch, whose stamina and positivity made huge impressions on me, and far less than the Malians who were artists with a pick axe, and whose stamina was reminiscent of Olympic distance runners.

The second week moved far more quickly than the first. We had settled into the routine of getting up at 6:30, having breakfast at 7, working from 8-12, having lunch from 12-2, going back to work from 2-4, coming back, showering and spending time with visitors from 4-7, eating dinner sometime after 7, and going to bed by around 9:30. I finally had a rhythm. I still struggled, with lack of stamina, with heat, with the food, with the dust and smoke, with my own expectations, but because of the support of the team, and Jay’s kindness in allowing me sleep in his hut, and the sense of the presence of God, and Jason’s generosity in allowing us to play his guitar in the evenings (which was huge in giving me a sense of familiarity and a connection to my second language) I was able to begin to do more than muddle through.

I never enjoyed myself the way that Jay did. Mali seemed like a second home to him, as if he were visiting old friends and family at a church homecoming. I never enjoyed myself as much as Joel who seemed the entire time like a fish in his own pond, always smiling, always ready for the next experience. In my sickness I was never as positive as Christian was in his. I obsessed over the things from home I lacked. Christian made a list of them so as to rob them of their power. I never engaged the people with Mitch’s fervor, attempting to speak their language from day one. I never had Jason Beach’s confidence and grace. While at first I envied them of these things, I’ve come to realize I was on my own journey. It was with them, involved them, and was shaped by them and all they brought to our team. My journey wasn’t about excelling, though I would have liked it to be. My journey I think was about learning to fail.

Before we left for Mali, Jason had said that he believed the trip would be a success if we just showed up. While it was nice to accomplish as a team the completion of our ditch digging project, which was completed at sundown on our last day of work, my journey wasn’t about any accomplishments. It was about the freedom to “fail”, the freedom to fall short of my own inflated self-expectations. It highlighted to me the importance of embodying the love of God. When I made the decision to go to Mali after Jay had called and invited me along all those months ago, I saw it as an opportunity to give hands and feet to the big ideas that had been swimming around in my head. I saw it as my opportunity to go “Into the Dark with God”. What I wasn’t prepared for was how truly dark the darkness was. What is funny is that I believed the darkness I would be traveling with God into was Mali, that serving this community of mostly Muslims and a few Christians would allow me to live out Christ’s incarnation, traveling from heaven to earth so to speak. I was surprised to find that I was the darkness through which I would travel with God.

Before I left I don’t think I had sensed the pride and hubris of my thoughts. The notion of living out Christ’s incarnation, while I believe theologically sound, still smacked of my own self importance, and that nagging belief that I try so hard to shake, that I am in some way superior to those around me. My journey was about attempting to move out from that, at least in practice, and focus on the other, whether that is the Malian, or those on my team. In doing so the movement begins in emulating the self giving love of God. So my failure to meet my own high expectations of myself, and my failure to live up to my high opinion of myself actually allowed me to be the love of God with my presence, in spite of myself, as opposed to believing myself to be the love of God. To play with James’ notion, in short thinking without action is dead. In the end I think my journey was only a step, but a step I needed to take.

Out of Africa

2008-02-15T08:43:00.001-08:00

It’s been awhile since I posted, and I’ll have a bigger post soon. I just returned from the country of Mali in West Africa after a 2 week trip. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I’ll write more on the experience in my next post after I’ve processed it a bit more. But here are some pictures Christian Hanley took, he’s the one on the right, while on the trip.

Settings

2008-01-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

I wanted to pass on that I've changed my settings so that anyone can leave a comment, as opposed to having to be a member of gmail or blogspot. Thanks.

The Perils of Grace and Beauty

2008-01-09T07:37:00.000-08:00

This may seem an obvious statement for all who know me, but I’m a big Flannery O’Connor fan. When I first read her work, I was struck by her insight into and representations of pride and hubris. In fact much of my understanding of human nature and theological anthropology can be traced back to her short stories. I believe it would be safe to say that my interest in the “darkness” mentioned in the title of this blog can be blamed to a large extent on her, if one would care to lay that blame.

Only more recently however have I begun to digest her understanding of God and grace, and the manner in which God interacts with the hubris in her characters. This interaction is of interest to me because it seems God is wholly silent in her stories, yet grace abounds, seeming to act as the voice of God speaking into the terrible darkness of her vision of the South. However, because her characters are emotionally, spiritually, and even sometimes physically grotesque and twisted, the grace must come in a form grotesque and twisted as well.

Inherent to this understanding of twisted grace seems to be an understanding of revelation as a shocking event in which God breaks through our impotence or indifference and grabs us at the core of our being and shakes, sometimes less gently than others. As overwhelming as this experience may be it is to O’Connor a moment of grace, though it may not seem at the time like “an undeserved kindness”. It’s in this vein I want to quote a lecture Rowan Williams gave on O’Connor in 2005. In it he refers to Tarwater, a character in her 1960 novel The Violent Bear it Away. The details of the story are unimportant for Williams’ point. But this portion of his sermon I think sums up nicely the parts of O’Connor’s depictions of grace and revelation that really resonate with me:

A God who fails to generate desperate hunger and confused and uncompromising passion is no God at all. It is not that Tarwater’s life and faith are held up as a model of or for anything; they are what they are. And they are what they are because God is as God is, not an agent within the universe, not a source of specialized religious consolation. If God is real, the person in touch with God is in danger, at any number of levels. And to awaken the hunger that Tarwater at last recognizes is to risk creating in people a longing too painful to bear or a longing that will lead them to take such risks that it seems indeed nakedly cruel to expose them to that hunger in the first place.

Taken from:
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/2005/050210.htm

On a side note, I wonder if we consider this when we evangelize, that is the sheer terror involved in being in relation with an all powerful, devastatingly beautiful, entirely free and loving God who was willing to sacrifice a Son to be reconciled to humanity, and to individuals. We love what that means for us, it makes us feel safe that God loves us so much that “God gave his only begotten Son”, however I’m not sure we look at the flip side of that coin that often. It seems to me the flip side is that we who have trusted Christ are now also “sons and daughters of God”. If this is the manner in which God’s love is shown through the suffering and death of a Son, and we now share a son or daughtership with Christ, then what rightful expectation can we have to temporal security and safety?

A friend once told me that risk reveals love, that our love for someone is evidenced by what we are willing to risk for them. If the Father is willing to risk the Son in order to evidence that love, then should we not as fellow sons and daughters expect to walk the same path in order to communicate and embody that love? This picture of God reminds me of the manner in which Lewis writes Aslan in his Narnia books, as terrible and terrifying, yet loving, wise and good. I’m with most people who tend to love the wisdom, goodness and faithfulness of the Lion, and ignore its freedom, power and beauty.

At any rate, Williams gives wonderful voice to the dark beauty of grace, revelation, and incarnation in O’Connor’s works. It seems in her stories that God’s grace is always unexpected in its existence, timing and form. I find this resonating with my experience of God, with God’s grace often coming as a shock, perhaps because of to whom that grace is given, either myself or some person I sadly estimate is not worthy of that grace, or perhaps the manner in which it’s given. As for myself I find my passions, longings, and joy being kindled by this grace, and I sense the danger in that.

I sense in these longings a hunger that can’t be sated. It’s a hunger that seeks to encounter unmediated the beauty of God, but must experience that beauty mediated through broken, unreliable, hurting people in a world that appears unhinged. So I find myself, like Gimli after his encounter with Galadriel in Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, desiring to experience the beauty of God again, and pursuing the paths God has blazed in which that beauty must be experienced.

That hunger to be in contact with the beauty of God however leads I think down the path in which Christ expressed that beauty in love and that’s through risking my own well being, esteem, emotions, and security in service of the least of these. I agree with Williams that on the surface it seems cruel to expose people to this, to relation with this God who calls us to follow through such danger, except that I think that perhaps there is something of the beauty of God that we will never experience until we travel these paths. Now this may seem entirely self evident to some, and of them I am truly envious, because this path is such a struggle for me to find, let alone walk. If it weren’t for the joy mediated through the beauty of God I experience when on this path in some fashion I don’t know that I’d be inclined to walk it at all…

First Time for Everything

2008-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00

I'm giving in and starting a blog... I know it's the trendy thing to do, but in reality, I'm doing it because I need your help. I'm hoping that I can share my gestating ideas regarding the intersection of imagination, theology and the arts, and dialogue with those who might be interested in reading those thoughts, hoping for help in finding my blind spots and the unintentional negatives my thoughts might be leaning toward.

The name of the blog might seem a bit daunting at first. You may say "God isn't about darkness." I suppose you are right, and I believe correct to feel the tension in the title, it's intentional. God is about glorifying God, the means by which God does that is what is of interest to me, thus the title, which is nicked from an early 80's Christmas medition by Hans Urs Von Balthasar (who has possibly the most pretentious name in the history of theology, and that's saying something). As an introduction I will post a portion of that meditation below. I suppose it's as good a starting point as any in kicking this off:

"But who will step out along this road that leads from God's glory to the figure of the poor Child lying in the manger? Not the person who is taking a walk for his own pleasure. He will walk along other paths that are more likely to run in the opposite direction, paths that lead from the misery of his own existence toward some imaginary or dreamed-up attempt at a heaven, whether of a brief pleasure or of a long oblivion. The only one to journey from heaven, through the world, to the hell of the lost, is he who is aware, deep in his heart, of a mission to do so; such a one obeys a call that is stronger than his own comfort and his resistance. This is a call that has complete power and authority over my life; I submit to it because it comes from a higher plane than my entire existence. It is an appeal to my heart, demanding the investment of my total self; its hidden, magisterial radiance obliges me, willy-nilly, to submit. I may not know who it is that so takes me into his service. But one thing I do know: if l stay locked within myself, if I seek myself, I shall not find the peace that is promised to the man on whom God's favor rests. I must go. I must enter the service of the poor and imprisoned. I must lose my soul if I am to regain it, for so long as I hold onto it, I shall lose it. This implacable, silent word (which yet is so unmistakable) burns in my heart and will not leave me in peace.
In other lands there are millions who are starving, who work themselves to death for a derisory day's wage, heartlessly exploited like cattle. There too are the slaughtered peoples whose wars cannot end because certain interests (which are not theirs) are tied up with the continuance of their misery. And I know that all my talk about progress and mankind's liberation will be dismissed with laughter and mockery by all the realistic forecasters of mankind's next few decades. Indeed, I only need to open my eyes and ears, and I shall hear the cry of those unjustly oppressed growing louder every day, along with the clamor of those who are resolved to gain power at any price, through hatred and annihilation. These are the superpowers of darkness; in the face of them all our courage drains away, and we lose all belief in the mission that resides in our hearts, that mission that was once so bright, joyous and peace bringing; we lose all hope of really finding the poor Child wrapped in swaddling clothes. What can my pitiful mission achieve, this drop of water in the white-hot furnace? What is the point of my efforts, my dedication, my sacrifice, my pleading to God for a world that is resolved to perish?
From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God's path. "Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you Good News of a great joy... This day is born the Savior", that is, he who, as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world. Behind him omnipotence and freedom; before, powerlessness, bonds and obedience. Behind him the comprehensive divine vision; before him the prospect of the meaninglessness of death on the Cross between two criminals, Behind him the bliss of life with the Father; before him, grievous solidarity with all who do not know the Father, do not want to know him and deny his existence. Rejoice then, for God himself has passed this way! The Son took with him the awareness of doing the Father's will. He took with him the unceasing prayer that the Father's will would be done on the dark earth as in the brightness of heaven. He took with him his rejoicing that the Father had hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes, to the simple and the poor. "I am the way", and this way is "the truth" for you; along this way you will find "the life". Along "the way" that I am you will learn to lose your life in order to find it; you will learn to grow beyond yourselves and your insincerity into a truth that is greater than you are. From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God's path. "Let not your hearts be troubled: believe in God; believe also in me." I am walking on ahead of you and blazing the trail of Christian love for you. It leads to your most inaccessible brother, the person most forsaken by God. But it is the path of divine love itself. You are on the right path. All who deny themselves in order to carry out love's commission are on the right path."

Taken from:
http://www.godspy.com/faith/Setting-Out-into-the-Dark-with-God-A-Christmas-Sermon-for-a-Troubled-World-by-Hans-Urs-von-Balthasar.cfm

I really like this as a starting point. It's a very thoughtful medition on the what the incarnation means to us, and what it means for our action in the world. What does it look like for us to imitate Christ's incarnation? Is there a portion of the Christian experience, namely a certain joy that can't be experienced until we begin to live in this incarnational way? I want to say yes based on the meditation and scripture, but that appears to mean that there is a portion of the intended Christian experience that is off limits to much of the American culture, if not all of western culture, and that's a frightenting thought. So that's where I'll leave it now, with a question and a frightening thought, but that's just my style I suppose.